Unbroken Circle
by Cardboard Tube Knight
Summary: Elizabeth unwittingly captures the TARDIS leaving it and the Doctor stranded in her altered reality. But is the Doctor's appearance enough to break the cycle of events?
1. A Lighthouse, A Man, A City

**Chapter One**

"_This is the road to ruin and we started at the end."_

Vicious waves tossed the ragged piece of drift wood over the sea for hours. The Doctor had come to with his mouth filling with salt water as he whirled beneath the water struggling to establish some sense of up and down. Even though he was relatively safe now he would still break into fits of coughing and wheezing.

The Doctor wondered how long he had been unconscious. His people didn't require as much oxygen as a Human so it could have been a considerable amount of time. But unlike most conventional things drowning would render him just as dead as any other man.

And he had thought himself to be a goner. His last memories were of the melancholy drone of the Cloister Bell as the TARDIS was ripped free of the Time Vortex and sent spiraling toward what he now knew to be Earth. He could have sworn that he felt Amy there, the warmth of her hug holding him tight and the beating of the single heart in her chest. The next thing he knew he was under the water. His ship was nowhere in sight now. Amy and Rory were as gone as they had been since Manhattan.

Occasionally he searched the darkness with the Sonic, but it proved fruitless. The first sign of any change came as the sun crested over the water and began to splash purplish hues into the clouds. An ominous dark shape appeared on the horizon. The Doctor swam for it at a brisk pace.

Through the sun's diffused light the sentinel of a lighthouse grew closer. There was no hint of the coastline that it should have guarded. By the time that he could make out the finer details of the structure it became clear that there wasn't a coast near it, not in this fog.

The lighthouse was a solitary structure on a rock that jutted up from the expanse of misty ocean around it. The Doctor pulled himself onto the dock that jutted out of the nearest side of the rocks. He rolled over onto his back and lay there trying to catch his breath and get the feeling back in his legs.

Times when he let his mind wander were the most dangerous. Amy crept into his head. Six months hadn't changed that and for all his centuries he didn't know if it was going to get any better.

_A task. Just need something to keep my mind occupied. _"The TARDIS." It was more than likely alright, just missing. And it was bound to be nearby, but still…

The Doctor pulled the Sonic out and shook the water free of the small contraption. He aimed it up at the tip of the lighthouse for a brief second, extended it to its full length and brought it back down to examine the side. "A peculiar thing; someone went through a great deal of trouble to put you out here."

He walked down the rickety dock toward the mall shack that stood at the latter half of it. There was a boat tied up in against the wall, though on closer inspection with it he figured that he'd fair better with the drift wood he'd piloted thus far. Something sparkled against creaking floorboards near the door and the Doctor bent over to retrieve it.

A silver coin with the word _Columbia _embellished on one side. Above that was an eagle encircled with a half wreath. On the reverse side of the coin there were twelve stars; six on either side of an embellished key, scroll and sword. He hit the coin with the Sonic, but not finding the desired result pocketed them and continued the trek up the dock and the rocks to the stairs that led into the lighthouse.

Another boat was dashed to bits on the rocks as he made his way up to the doors. There were no signs of whether its occupants. There was a sign nailed to the door, a yellow piece of paper pocked with blood and damp from the fog:

_"DeWitt—bring us the girl and wipe away the debt. This is your last chance."_

"DeWitt…" the Doctor paused before opening the door. The lower level of the interior lit with a pair of candles that sat on either side of a small wash basin atop a table. Above the table was a framed piece of aged paper with words stippled into it:

_Of thy sins _

_Shall I wash thee_

"Well that's going to take a much more substantial amount of water." The Doctor checked his reflection in the water and took the time to push his floppy brown hair back into place and straighten his bowtie. He checked the water with the Sonic. "Not more than a few hours old. Someone's expecting someone."

The Doctor rounded a flight of stairs to a second floor that was scattered with bits of food and broken glass on the floor. Signs of a struggle. He made his way through making note of the map on the wall that had pins shoved into several major areas. Something caught his eye as he was passing.

The year at the bottom of the map: 1911. So that's where he was, or somewhere there about. More those strange silver coins dotted the desk, but he left these put. He made his way up to the third floor to find a freshly killed body in blood spattered overalls and with a bag over its head. A sign hung from its neck: _Don't disappoint us!_

He ran the last set of stairs, taking them two at a time until he emerged into the pale morning sunlight to find a door guarded by three bells. It looked to be some sort of a complex lock or, rather, a lock that was meant to be complex. He hit it with the Sonic Screwdriver once and the bells chimed a tune.

A signal noise escaped the lighthouse. The sky erupted in a chorus of mournful tones with red beams of light jutting down from the sky in time. The sound and light fell silent and then there was a second signal from the lighthouse. As the sky replied with another burst of sound and rosy light, the Doctor gazed skyward to trying to catch the source of the noise with the Sonic Screwdriver. It was gone too soon and no sign of it seemed to be left by the time the device decided to cooperate.

The cylinder that contained the light inside of the lighthouse lifted up into the ceiling and the vacant spot where it had been whirred with a mechanical sound before the floor flipped over to reveal a plush red leather chair with chrome trim and upholstery nails embedded in it.

"Bit posh for a lighthouse—and this time, for that matter," he muttered the last part. The Doctor thought about rethinking the decision he had already made to sit in the chair, but he was too curious to talk himself out of it.

He dropped into the chair and thick metal cylinders folded up to close around his wrists. Walls locked into place around him forming a pod. The sound of rocket engines whirred beneath the chair him. A mechanical, feminine voice spoke. _"Make yourself ready, pilgrim; the bindings are there as a safeguard."_

"Wait," he tried to struggle free, but the cuffs on the chair were sturdily built. As the chair tipped forward and aimed him toward the huge rocket engines below he felt as if he would have fallen had it not been for the restraints in the chair.

"_Ascension in the count of five…count of four…three…two…" _

The chair tilted upright and locked into place leaving him with just a small porthole directly in front of him to see out of. The small craft rocketed through up into the sky pushing him back into the chair. He managed to bend down so that he could reach his coat with one hand and pull it part of the way open. With his mouth he extracted the Screwdriver from his pocket and bit down on it to open the cuffs around his hands.

"_Ascension. Ascension. Five thousand feet. Ten thousand feet." _

The pod broke through the cloud layer and the window was shrouded with mist. Water began to bead on the glass. The cuffs snapped free from around his wrists after some prodding.

"_Fifteen thousand feet."_

The clouds parted and the most magnificent view came into sight through the small window. The Doctor unlocked the restraints around his ankles so that he could press himself against the window of the craft. Suspended among the clouds was a city the stretched off into the distance until it was hidden in mist.

"_Hallelujah,"_ the mechanical voice said finally.

Children played in a grassy square far below his pod. A man garbed in a white robe was leading some people through a small grotto at the side of a church with a set of bells chimed. A man and woman were having a meal in a plaza while children chased a puppy around them erratic circles.

Bridges with interlocking teeth connected the smaller floating platforms that acted as the blocks and districts of the city. Other sections were held near each other using huge lengths of chain. The Doctor found himself so in awe of the view that he almost forgot his predicament.

He didn't like being directed in this manner and would rather land someone where randomly chosen than somewhere that someone else predetermined for him. He flashed the Screwdriver around searching for something that had to be there. "There you are. Let's take a look, shall we?"

He popped the panel off of the wall just behind where his head had been as the ship coasted toward something. "Look at you, all beautiful and primitive!" he rearranged the wires that jutted out of the panel in what might have seemed like a haphazard fashion to an outside observer and then slammed the panel back into place. "That should do—"

His sentence was cut short by a sharp jerk from the vessel. Before he could peel the panel back away from the wall the small ship went into an uncontrolled spin, jerking and pitching back and forth as the cabin filled with smoke. The ship whipped and whirled in every direction as the Doctor bounced from wall and wall trying to fight his way back to the panel.

* * *

The blue box from her head. Elizabeth had always felt like the tears were a kind of wish fulfillment. She had dreamed of the strange blue box before and today she saw it through a tear and with a little concentration she was able to drag it into her tower. The act of pulling things seem to be getting more strenuous these days; she could feel herself weakening.

Her depleted power wasn't a substantial loss and she didn't really need to worry about opening too many tears. It wasn't like she could leave through them; they were one way doors. Still the blue box had been in her presence for long enough that she had a fair bit of it painted. She had started with a rough sketch, but now her subject stood partially painted lush garden. The likeness of the garden she had taken from a book; would she have loved to actually have had the chance to pull a garden into being here in the tower!

She dropped her brush into the glass of water and crossed to the other side of the library to touch the box again. It was cool under her hands. She studied the sign that sat above the sturdy double doors. "_Police Public Call Box_," she read it out loud. "What's it mean?"

Elizabeth walked around the outside of the box examining it before she came to a stop in front of the doors. "You say public. How are people supposed to make use of you if you keep yourself shut like that?" her lips curled into a light hearted smile as she gave the box a sideways glance.

Talking to inanimate objects got to be easy when you were alone all of the time. Only one creature came to visit her and it was both a curse and a blessing…

She walked back to her easel and grabbed the brush from the water. Elizabeth knocked most of the water free using the edge of the glass before touching the tip of the brush with green paint. She worked the brush back and forth over the canvas filling in the outer edges of the picture with the patterns that would make up her grass and the foliage of her trees.

This tower was all that she had ever known and she only knew what the exterior looked like because she had seen its picture in books. Elizabeth's earliest memories were of these same library shelves, only then they had been scarcely filled. At first a few people would be with her daily. Later they only checked in occasionally. After that only Songbird came; he was needed to supply her with food and more books.

_The Songbird_. She thought back to the first time she had seen the massive form of the creature streaking through the clouds. The thing defied reason. Its huge circular glass eyes had searched for her with beams of light through the window. Elizabeth had hidden at first, but after so long of it just leaving her books and food she decided to go out to meet it.

The loneliness seemed imagined now. The characters in books were her friends. Her imagination and the voice in her head were her constant companions, though that voice sounded much like her own putting on phony accent of some unknown origin. And the Songbird was—her caretaker. It was hard to put into words.

Elizabeth grimaced at one of the fern plant in her picture. Something was _wrong_ with the leaves, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She walked down the library shelf and to where the ladder stood. One of her coats was slung over the lower rungs of the ladder with her bow and quiver propped up next to it.

Her first bow had been something she had made from wood she broke off a shelf and it was barely pliable. Songbird had brought her a real bow from within Columbia, which she knew that she probably shouldn't have. It was one of her most prized possessions and hours of her day were sometimes spent shooting at makeshift targets that she would set up around the tower.

Elizabeth grabbed the ladder to move it down along the stacks for the place where she had filed the books with beautiful pictures of plants. The police box was just out of the way and she had to squeeze between it with the ladder to avoid going around.

"I've got to stop keeping these up so high if I'm going to keep using them."

She smoothed her skirt down and stepped up onto the bottom rung of the ladder. As she was lifting her foot to begin the rest of her climb and explosion rocked the entire library and books and debris were thrown across the room. Elizabeth tumbled to the floor so that her back was resting against the blue box.

Her vision was hazy and the room was filled with smoke, but she could just make out a tulip shaped metal container resting atop a mound of debris. As her sight righted itself the finer details of the thing came into being.

It was a short crawl to the debris and she pulled herself up onto the pile to sit next to the strange object. There was a window in the front and when she pressed her face close to the glass she could see a man inside seemingly unconscious. Her heart thudded against her rib cage. It had been so long since she had seen a real live person that she didn't remember that she had missed it.

Elizabeth pried at the door eagerly until it grave, cutting her hand slightly. In the rush of adrenaline the blood pooling on her palm didn't matter. The man inside of was smartly dressed with a tweed coat of a deep green color and a pristine bowtie nestled in the neckline of his maroon shirt.

His face seemed too long, too much chin she'd say. She could see his facial shape in her art books being listed as the wrong way to do things with a corrected example next to it. Beads of sweat dotted his skin. He was too pale.

"Mister," her own voice suddenly sounded improper. She cleared her throat. "Sir, are you alright?" He was breathing, but it seemed labored. She wasn't used to the breathing of others. How was it supposed to look?

She hooked her arms under his and dragged him out into the open room near the huge blue box. Elizabeth closed her eyes and pressed her index fingers to her temples. _Think. Think. Think. The Silvester Method. _Elizabeth had read about unconscious people and what to do to aid them in a book before.

"Patient on their back. Arms above the head to aid in inhalation and then pressed against the chest to aid in exhalation," she muttered the instructions as she performed the steps. "Sometimes it's customary to…stimulate artificial respiration."

A flash of the illustration in her book popped into her head; two bald figures locked their mouths and one blew into the other one. Elizabeth's cheeks reddened and she was suddenly aware of how nude she was without her overcoat.

He was already breathing, though. She pressed his hand to her cheek and gasped. "He feels cold. But—I don't know what feels normal. Christ, what do I do?"

She reached down and brushed the flop of brown hair out of the man's face. "Please be okay." As if in response the man's eyes opened slowly and his green irises darted back in forth in small motions searching her face.

When he spoke his accent was one she had never heard before, though she had heard very few people speak in her twenty years. The offense of what he said overrode the excitement she was feeling for having met another person. "Look at you, you sexy girl, you."

* * *

One moment the Doctor was staring up past a beautiful woman at his TARDIS and the next thing he knew a book hit him in the face. He shielded his face with one hand and beamed the woman in the face with the Sonic Screwdriver. "Ow, what kind of nutter goes around attacking people with literature?"

The woman had retreated away from him and the TARDIS and had her arms folded over a part of her chest that was still visible over the top of the dress. The Doctor made note. _The clothing, the sensibilities, definitely early twentieth century._

"Your perverted comment deserves nothing less," the woman said. Even with her brow furrowed in anger the young woman looked about as kind as they come. She had chestnut hair pulled into a thick braid that stopped between her shoulders. A pink bow was fixed to the end of it. There was a lacey choker encircling her neck and her shoulders were exposed. The Doctor noticed the faded lines of scars on her upper arms and shoulders.

The corset-dress she wore was form fitting and deep blue, TARDIS blue. It tapered down into an ankle length skirt with a frilly bit extending out past the bottom. She wore knee high socks and Mary-Janes.

His eyes were drawn to her right pinky finger where in place of a tip there was a thimble. The Doctor quickly turned his attentions back to her face. Her blue eyes were regarding him with fury. "An apology would be nice."

He realized what she was referring to. "Oh I wasn't talking about _you_." He snapped his fingers and the doors of the TARDIS opened shedding golden light across the plush carpet. "I was talking about that."

"You'd call a…box sexy?"

"It's more than a box," the Doctor hopped to his feet and headed inside of the TARDIS.

"How did you do that thing with your fingers and…hey where are you going?"

From the way that the box was facing the woman couldn't see the interior unless she tried to follow him. He could tell by the sound of her voice she was making her way around to him. _Good, I love this bit._

The Doctor cast his jacket onto the rail next to the door and retrieved a coat that was almost an exact duplicate of it from the rack. He made his way to the TARDIS console and worked the slider toward the center of the ship. There was no response from the ship.

He bent down over the typewriter that was set into the console, peering up from time to time at the view screen as he wrapped away on the keys. Still there was nothing from the TARDIS. The woman stood frozen in the doorway, her eyes wider than he thought possible. This is—this is," she stepped out and circled the TARDIS, he had a visual of her on several of the screens as she made her rounds. "This is exactly what Rosalind Lutece wrote about."

The Doctor's hearts sank. "Who?"

"_The Principles of Quantum Mechanics_ by Rosalind Lutece. That's the book I…hit you with," she trailed off. She walked deeper into the control room turning in a circle to take in the sights. Her fingers drifted up one of the railings. "Lutece gave it to me herself. In it she talks about intra-dimensional-mobile-pocket-dimensions and how you could build such a place as this that encompasses a larger moveable space inside of a smaller container."

"I miss the days when people just made a quip about it being bigger on the inside," the Doctor muttered.

"This is fantastic. If only she were alive to see it!" said the woman. She buried her hands in her lap, positively buzzing with excitement.

The Doctor tried the controls again, though he had power the TARDIS was nonresponsive to any attempts to move it. The door had opened when he snapped which meant its soul was still there but something else was the matter. "Tell me, clever-girl, what is this place."

"This is Monument Island," she said. His nickname triggered the realization in her. "How rude of me! I didn't introduce myself, I'm Elizabeth."

"Well, Hello Elizabeth. It's nice to meet you. Why is my ship here?"

"The Intra-Dimensional-Mobile-Pocket-Dimension?"

"It's a TARDIS and yes."

Elizabeth shrugged. "I saw it and brought it here. It's not hard."

Something had anchored the TARDIS in place. A readout on the gauges on one side of the console revealed something even more disturbing. "Was it your game to lure my TARDIS here so that you could drain it of power?" he rounded on her.

"No."

The Doctor left the console and headed back out into the library where he found the book he had been hit with. He flipped through the pages. In just skimming he could see that the book was written late last century and yet it had concepts that only the Time Lords and a few other races even imposed in their building of things. The entire city that he had seen earlier, referred to here as Columbia, was apparently just one that didn't as much fly as it 'refused to fall'.

He closed the book and pocketed it, turning back to see Elizabeth peeking out of the door. In the distance a four note song sounded and terror griped Elizabeth's features.

"I swear to you that I didn't intend to trap you here. I swear to God," she said and he could tell right away that she was telling the truth. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "We have to leave here though…he's coming."

"Who's coming?"

A mournful cry broke the air. Impossibly large leather wings beat at the sky somewhere in the distance. Elizabeth scrambled to grab her things up from around the room in a panic and shove them into a small bag that she usually kept her art supplies in. "The Songbird."

The Doctor could hardly contain his delight. The whole idea just seemed magical. "Songbird, eh?"

"He'll kill you and he'll—he'll make sure that I'm never able to leave this place again. Sir, now that you've presented me with a choice, I am choosing freedom."

The sounds were growing closer. "How long have you been in here?" he asked stepping closer to her so that he was looking right down his nose into her eyes.

"You have to let me come with you, at least until we reach the city," she dodged the question.

"I would take you anywhere you wanted to go, but the TARDIS isn't budging."

"Leave it. Come on!" Elizabeth ran toward the hole he had created and bounded out of it down to a set of steps. When he reached the spot where she had jumped he could see that this wasn't just a little gap, but there had actually been danger of her falling.

The Doctor examined the sky with some curiosity, wishing that he could see this Songbird. The panic in Elizabeth's words were enough to convince him, though. He closed the TARDIS doors with care. "We'll be back, Old Girl. Looks like we're running for now."

He made the same jump that Elizabeth had to land rolling on the next part of the side of the head of a giant statue. His crash had damaged the structure badly, but it should hold while they find a way to rescue the TARDIS. When he glanced back just before they headed inside of the lower part of the statue he could see the face more clearly. It looked like Elizabeth.

Another massive cry filled the air and the Doctor dashed inside. The tower was rumbling and shaking around them, the Doctor found Elizabeth with her back to a door looking through a huge plate glass window. "The library…someone was _watching me_," she said.

"I didn't come in that way. But it looks—we have to go," he tried to pull her along. They passed through other rooms overlooking her dressing room and her bedroom. As they took the elevator down the tower rumbled once.

Elizabeth gasped, but when nothing else happened she regained her composure. "What were they doing to me here? Why did they—why were they keeping me?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said.

"What do they say about me out there?"

When the elevator opened recoiled back at the sight of the machine that filled this lower part of the building. He struck out into the room with the Sonic Screwdriver scanning different bits of the machine. Electricity arced from different parts of the room and visible waves of energy displaced the air around gargantuan pieces of machinery. "This is a primitive power gathering station. It's actually siphoning off space and time energy from somewhere, but…"

"What is it?" Elizabeth asked.

"The TARDIS," the Doctor said before the building rocked again.

Before she could ask another question they were headed for the door, but Elizabeth turned back to see something on the back side of the machine that made her freeze. "Lancelot," she said as she approached a stuffed bear that was behind several layers of glass with a lever in front of it. "And this poetry book is mine, too."

There were two other things like the stuffed bear; a book of poetry and a red smear on a piece of cloth. Above each was a label: Companion, Poetry book and…

"Menarche," Elizabeth dropped back in disgust. "They collected my menses?"

Unsure of how to answer, the Doctor said nothing. He stepped forward and pulled the lever over the soiled cloth and a bolt of energy hit the piece of fabric rendering it clean. "Alterations of dimensional energy. This is beginning to look a lot less like the boring 1912 I know." He checked his watch. "And on a Sunday too!"

When he turned back Elizabeth had run off. He found her a short distance away in another room where another smaller machine like the one they had seen before stood. There was a table filled with charts and graphs and signs warning of quarantine and the specimen.

The Doctor approached slowly as the tower shuddered with the sound of the gargantuan creature outside. There was a sketch of some women showing the progression of age and on that same chart it hypothesized power level growth.

"Subject's hair samples. Subject's finger nail samples. That menstrual blood sample. What were they doing here?" Elizabeth was holding the set of sample containers up in disbelief.

"Studying you," the Doctor said.

Elizabeth managed to bump the table and a crackling recorded voice echoed from a device half-buried under papers. _"What makes the girl different? I suspect it has less to do with what she is, and rather more with what she is not. A small part of her remains from where she came. It would seem the universe does not like its peas mixed with its porridge."_

"That voice," she said. "I can't believe this. I want nothing to do with this place." She ran for the door.

"Elizabeth!"

The tower shook with the sound of wings. The Doctor was right behind her as she ran out into the small plaza-like area in front of the building. A massive beak slammed into the pavement behind them and the Doctor turned back just in time to catch side of the huge, green-glass eye regarding him. The Songbird was as he had guessed, unnatural. Its body composed of leather and stitching with some manner of frame underneath, he couldn't be certain what that was composed of.

It blinked, its eyes turning yellow. "Look at you, you beautiful thing you," he edged closer to the creature, drawing the Sonic Screwdriver. "You are just amazing. When I broke in here…a proximity alarm, I must have triggered it. That's what called him here."

"We have to go!"

"I don't think he knows what to do about me just yet," the Doctor aimed the Screwdriver at the thing.

"I won't let you hurt him!" Elizabeth tackled the Doctor against the railing. In the instant before they both fell to the ground the Doctor could see the creature's eyes shift again; this time from yellow to red.

It dragged its beak down through the cement shattering it and in a fit of rage unseated their piece of the ground from the support structure. The Doctor snatched Elizabeth along as he headed for a rail car.

"_The Gondola Railway system is currently closed, please…"_ the mechanical voice on the rail car was speaking as the Doctor used the Screwdriver on the console and halted it.

"Oh, shut up," the car moved forward, but was too slow. Songbird took to the air racing past them, seemingly trying to gauge what they were doing. Elizabeth clung to the railing watching for the creature's next move as the Doctor searched the small vessel.

A tool box in the back control room had a claw like implement that seemed to fit over the arm and had a place for a person to grip it. A rotating, fan like blade protruded out past the hand. The Doctor walked out into the open wearing it and Elizabeth glanced back to see the instrument around his arm.

"A Skyhook! I've read about those—we might be able to use it."

Songbird passed close over their heads and his speed sent a gust of wind billowing over the deck of the small gondola. The railway hooked and curved through the city and their vessel bit into the rails as it took these turns. The Doctor had put some pep in its engine and now he wondered if it was too much.

Elizabeth ducked. "You can use it to ride the rails without a car or gondola!" she yelled over the howl of the wind.

This time Songbird passed in front of them and the rail was cleaved in out for a large section. The Doctor dashed for the control room, grabbing at the emergency break. When he pulled it the ship was already approaching the gap and it wouldn't have time to stop. The back brakes caught hold of the rail and the front it bucked wildly. The Doctor grabbed for Elizabeth, but they were pitched up into the air and tumbling end over end.

They were headed for water, but the distance seemed wrong. Behind them Songbird climbed only to flip over and got into a steep attack dive. An ear piercing screech drowned out the howl of the wind just before the Doctor saw Elizabeth crash into the water. He hit a millisecond later to sink down several feet. The impact took its toll on him and he could feel his sense dulling. Darkness clouded the edges of his vision and the last thing he saw was the creature's face and beak poke into the water snapping and clawing.


	2. Of Rescues and Revelations

**Chapter Two**

Other than Booker, the twins were the only white folk that didn't look at Lewis funny simply because he was black. The former was someone that he actually would call _friend _at this point. He had dragged the man out of enough bars in a drunken stupor to earn that title, at least. When they first met, Booker had looked him in the eye and spoken to him like he was more than a shadow of a person for the first time in his life.

The twins, on the other hand, hardly bothered to acknowledge the existence of Lewis or Booker on any of the occasions that he'd met them. The pair dashed about their lab checking an assortment of gauges and speaking to each other in a sort of shorthand that only they were able to grasp.

"Do you think there _has to be _lighthouse?" asked the male.

"I don't think we _have_ to do this," answered the female. A wisp of the woman's hair dropped into her face, brushing against her cheek. She seemed to not notice at all.

"But we already will."

"It's a sure thing. Fixed point. It wasn't too long ago we thought that about the lighthouse? And the rowing?"

"Well, I, for one, was tired of having to row alone."

The female sighed. "That's your bed to lie in," she said with a sort of finality that seemed to come in preparation for Booker's next statement.

"Excuse me," he was across the room, nearer to the twins than Lewis himself. "Are you going to tell me what's going on here?"

The male looked up at Booker. "Just bring us the girl, mister DeWitt, and wipe away your debt."

The female nodded. "Clean slate."

Booker repeated the request to himself.

"The other one, do you think it would be any harm to send him?" the female of the two asked.

"What more harm could we do?" the male replied.

As Lewis watched the pair of them he couldn't help but feel there was something completely off about the two of them. In the weeks since they had first contacted Booker with their contract their names hadn't been given. Very little they said made logical sense. The pair had developed a way of understanding one another.

The room that the twins were calling a laboratory was a rented basement space with old brick encasing it. Pipes protruded from the walls and there was a dank feel to the place. Four towering machines stood around the room with a circle drawn on the floor to connect them. Measurements were marked in the circle leading into the center which was sectioned off with a smaller circle marked _Target. _

Bundles of wire were secured to the floor in tape and running between the four pillars and back into a generator rigged up near the wall. Another machine stood to one side of the room with another set of wires feeding back into it. This machine encompassed most of one wall and it was behind it that the twins spent most of their time.

Most of the time the twins asked Booker questions about insignificant things and noted down the results. This was the way it had gone for a while now. They would ask Lewis things too, but only about Booker and his life.

This was the first time that this machine had made an appearance. It would appear that the twins had something different in mind this time.

The male walked through the center of the circle toward them holding a pair of strap on packs that had wires trailing behind them and a rod sticking straight up out of the top. "Put this on," he handed the first one to Booker who immediately obeyed.

"I guess I won't be making any fashion statements in this thing," Booker muttered.

The woman spoke from behind the machine. "He doesn't row and he doesn't swim away."

"Indeed," replied the male. He handed the second pack to Lewis. "Here you are. Now, please make your place calmly to the target area."

"I don't know about this, Book," Lewis said.

Booker glanced back and shrugged. "They haven't had me do anything unsafe as of yet and they pay for all of this silliness."

As Lewis stopped in the center of the circle next to Booker. The female spoke again. "This is quite safe, used it ourselves a while back. As long as I can keep your atoms coherently together everything should be fine."

"Atoms?"

"Throw the switch," said the male. She did and there was an electricity that filled the air until the point that Lewis swore he could smell the electricity. The vest he had been given heated up as the sound increased in pitch and volume. "You'll find weapons and money for you in a crate behind _The Goodtime Club_. The crate shall be marked _Lutece Labs_," continued the male.

The woman still stood holding the lever, she practically had to yell over the noise now. Even then her pristine accent didn't seem tense or less formal. "Is marked," she corrected her brother.

"Of course."

"Wait, what are you talking about?" Booker yelled. Lewis was speechless, the vest was glowing white now and the heat off of the things seemed to be threatening to burn them. His body felt to heavy to try and leave the circle. Light and color arced off of the towers that surrounded them and hit the antenna that came out of the back of the vest pack.

The male twin stepped up to the edge of the circle and pointed to his breast pocket. "The girl for the debt, remember."

Booker managed to draw the picture out of his pocket and Lewis caught a glimpse of a pretty young woman with an intrigued look on her face. It seemed that the photo was a candid—she didn't know she was even on camera more than likely. The light and sound continued to grow until they were engulfed in whiteness and vanished from existence.

* * *

The stranger was a lot different than Elizabeth had pictured her rescuer. Rescue. The thought was never far from her mind. Being locked in a tower for years would do that to anyone. And in between reading books about science and art and other things that interested her about the world around her she would sometimes pick up stories of princesses trapped away by some great evil waiting for their prince to come save them.

Now here she was dragging her prince as he choked and gasped for air from the artificial seat at Battleship Bay, all the while crying out for some woman named Amy. He was soaking wet which only made him heavier and none of the patrons of the beach seemed apt to help her. She tugged on him until they were away from the surf.

He coughed raggedly and rolled over to wretch up a mouth full of water. It was at that moment Elizabeth realized she didn't even know his name. "Be still. You nearly drowned."

"That'll be the second time today. Need to find a drier planet to pick on," he coughed roughly.

"Shush," she chided him.

He ignored her. "You pulled me from the water?"

She nodded. "Found this too," Elizabeth held the strange green tipped thing he had been waving around back in her tower. Her hadn't survived the trip down and she didn't see it anywhere. "It seemed to be important to you and I could see it sinking so I swam down and plucked it up."

"Thank you."

"It's really not a problem—I think I came off rude earlier. It's just that…" she paused tilting her head to pick up a distant sound.

"You're fine. I understand."

"Music," she said. "I think I hear music."

The man waved her away. "Go," he said. "I'll be fine. I can find you."

"Oh, thank you!" Elizabeth dashed across the sands counting on the jovial melody to lead her.

* * *

The Doctor didn't know how long he had laid on the sun baked beach before he finally got the strength to roll over and sit up. He could see that he had been right about the fall. They hadn't hit the actual ocean. This was another part of the city and probably the most impressive part he had seen yet.

This particular flying island was an artificial beach with water tumbling down over the edge into an abyss. He didn't have time to study the particulars but he was sure now that he had somehow been thrown into an alternate reality. One where 1912 had technology that would be seen Earth until the distant future.

A couple set nearby, a man and woman who bore a striking similarity to one another. They had refined, dignified features and copper colored hair. They even wore matching bathing suits. The woman was holding a parasol and regarding him in the way a Catholic School nun might regard a disobedient student.

"Excuse me, did you see which direction the young girl I was with got off to?" the Doctor asked.

The pair looked at each other. "An unexpected storm."

The man nodded. "Good. Then this experiment has proven different than the others."

"I wouldn't go as far to count your hatched chickens yet."

The Doctor shook his head before walking away from the two. He could hear several sources of music. The most prominent one was coming from the dock. The beach was dotted with people and he made his way through a small indoor area lined with vending machines that looked all too modern.

There was a young woman standing along the wall near one of the machines. "Have you seen a young girl, blue dress, big blue eyes, hair like that," the Doctor made a motion with his hands.

The woman stared at him.

He dug into his pockets and pulled out the psychic paper. "Her."

The woman shook her head and the curled her finger up into her hair. "Haven't seen her. But if you're looking to pass the time I'm without an escort."

"No thanks, busy," the Doctor spotted some dancers on the dock and immediately knew where to find Elizabeth. He trotted off for the steps to the pier and ran down their length to find Elizabeth with the clear blue sky at her back dancing in circles with some other people. The fall into the water must have pulled her braid out, her long brown hair was now free to sway back and forth past her shoulders.

She noticed him too and grabbed him by the hand. "Isn't this wonderful."

"Elizabeth, we need to be going. The TARDIS—"

"You've got to dance with me. I mean, I've never had another person _to _dance with," she pulled him close and before he could protest they were spinning in circles with hands linked. Elizabeth was doing less dancing than just whirling about to the music but for a moment time seemed to slow down and he was looking into Amy's green eyes. Her hair was wreathed in flowers and she actually glowed in her wedding dress.

The Doctor had danced until it was time for them to leave that night and it had seemed like back then he had a whole life filled with the Ponds ahead of him. That was lifetimes ago and they were already dead and buried in his world.

He snapped back to focus, broke Elizabeth out of her spin and cupped her at the back with one hand. She came to a more formal posture and he twirled her around and brought her back to a rest facing him. She laughed, leaning into his hand at her back as she shook with excitement. "So you can dance, Mister…"

"Doctor."

"What are you a Doctor of?" she asked.

"Just the Doctor, really."

"I see. So, Doctor, how did you get so good at dancing?" Elizabeth asked.

"A millennia of practice."

She laughed again and for a moment he forgot their situation. "I apologize again for running off earlier—I'm just so happy to finally be out," she said.

"We're not out of danger yet. Someone went through a great deal of trouble to keep you locked up. A person doesn't simply forget about something like that. If those machines do what I think they do there won't be a place we can get you that's far enough away…"

"We should check in the city. Someone there must know."

"What is this place?" the Doctor asked.

"This is Battle Ship Bay. I read that it actually only took them six months to build this place."

"This is wrong," the Doctor muttered again. "This city, what city is all of this?"

"Columbia. I would have thought it was pretty famous all over the world."

The Doctor slipped his arm around her waist. "Walk with me, pretend that this is normal—like we're a couple."

"I'm not sure I know how to…"

"What can you tell me about," the Doctor broke his sentence off as a man passed. "What can you tell me about Columbia?" His hair had flopped back in front of his face.

Elizabeth glanced around. "Let's see do you want the long version or the short version?"

"Long version," the pair settled in the corner of a short breezeway that led off of the beach.

"Okay, Columbia was a city that was conceived as a floating symbol of how great the United States is. The Prophet oversaw the creation of the city and it was launched in 1894 to be sent to distant shores…" Elizabeth began.

The Doctor cut her off. "Short version."

"Columbia was a part of the United States, but left the Union and we've been up here ever since," she said with a hint of annoyance.

The Doctor stopped to process it all. "How does it fly?"

Elizabeth raised her eyebrow. "It doesn't; not technically. There are these," she made a motion in the air with her hands, "quantum partials suspended in air and kept at a fixed height—it's hard to explain." Elizabeth pressed her hand to her head.

All that the Doctor could do was stare at her with a slack look on his face. "How did you know that much?" he grasped her at the shoulders.

Her face colored slightly. "The book you ruined," she pointed to his breast pocket.

"Sorry, I'll fix it later. But I'm afraid you're going to owe me a meal for that. I'm starving," Elizabeth said.

"I suppose I stole you before lunch," the Doctor said.

Elizabeth nodded. They made their way up toward boardwalk through the small passage way. The Doctor noticed a group of huge posters of a bearded man with the word Comstock plastered across the bottom of the poster. He spotted something else across the room. A large sign with the words _Whites Only_ plastered over it in black paint.

He knew this time period, especially in America, was filled with this kind of racism. But somehow this seemed slightly different. Comstock's eyes seemed to follow him even from the poster.

A lone police officer stood against the wall watching the otherwise unattended merchandise of the gift shop. "A little shop—I used to love a little shop…" the Doctor trailed off as he peered down at a Little Miss Columbia doll that was stacked on a shelf amongst other items. They made their way out to the boardwalk proper. As the emerged into the sunlight between the walls lined with vendors a man and a woman stepped out in front of them in suits too sharp and prim to be true. They had strawberry blonde hair. His was neatly trimmed and hers was pulled back into a regal looking pun. Other than their height, hair, gender and the slight variation in clothing that caused

They were holding small boxes laid out on plush, red pillows with little charms nestled down into them. "Doctor, over here!" Elizabeth said perhaps a bit too loudly.

"Bird," said the man.

"Or the cage," said the woman.

"Or perhaps the bird."

"Nothing beats the cage."

The voices and their back and forth interaction with one another sounded familiar. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Look at these; they're amazing," Elizabeth grasped the small boxes with the charms in them. On the right was a golden bird surrounded by deep blue and on the left was the same background boasting a glimmering cage. "Which one do you like more? This one—or—or this. The bird is beautiful. The cage is somber, but there's really something special about it."

"You can't really want the cage now, can you?" the Doctor asked.

Elizabeth held the broach up to her neck so that it fit against the choker she was wearing. "I don't know. I think it fits."

The Doctor sighed. "Then get the cage." An excited squeal escaped Elizabeth before she was able to calm herself. "I don't have any money though," the Doctor added.

"There's no cost," said the man who had been holding the bird.

"The charm is hers to keep," the woman added.

After a curt, synchronized bow the man and the woman started to walk away. Their pillows were still poised atop their hands in and elegant fashion as they slipped into a corner next to a vending machine that shouted slogans about its value. "I expected the bird," said the male.

"If you're going to be a sore loser I shan't do this again," the woman said with an authoritative snap in her voice.

The comment drew the Doctor's ear until he heard the dismayed muttering of the people up ahead. He glanced up the main thoroughfare to see that everyone was gazing out of the faux bay at a large statue in the distance. Smoke and dust was billowing from the hips of the statue and the ground around its feet.

"It's an omen," a nearby woman was whispering to another woman.

"What's happening mommy?" a frightened kid was wedge between his parents right at the railing.

A man turned to some of the other onlookers with a joyous smile spread over his face. "What if it's on this day that the Prophet plans to reveal the Lamb! It only makes sense."

There was a murmur of agreement. The Doctor leaned in closer to Elizabeth. "What is this day?" he asked.

"The anniversary of the Columbia's succession," she said.

When the Doctor glanced back to the spot where the man and woman who had gifted Elizabeth with the cage charm had been standing previously they were gone. He took the charm from Elizabeth's hands and reached up to slip it to the lace choker around her neck. "We need to figure out who it was that had you in that place and why. But I don't trust the number of ears and eyes that might be around here."

"People are staring because of my shoulders being out and because you're touching me on the neck," Elizabeth said.

"There," the Doctor patted her shoulders lightly. She started to walk away and he followed after her. There was a door up ahead where people were clumped together.

A police officer stood on a crate with the word _PROVISIONS _burned into the side. "There's going to be a bit of a wait while we get the lines back up and check to make sure it's safe. We suspect that _Vox Populi _terrorists are responsible for the attack."

The Doctor and Elizabeth had to skirt around the edge of the room near the door just to find space to stand near one another. There was a hallway on either side of the room, but the way nearest to them was cramped with police. The Doctor glanced around the room weighing his choices before deciding what to do.

"What do we do now?" asked Elizabeth in a whisper.

"Improvise," the Doctor said as he brushed passed her headed for the row of Police Officers. He pulled the psychic paper from within his coat, shook it once to dry it and then held it up. "I'm with the Columbia Science Authority—my assistant and I have some matters to attend to that are of great need to the Prophet."

Two of the officers near the center glanced at each other and then shrugged. A pocket big enough for Elizabeth and the Doctor to pass through opened up. They slipped past, Elizabeth muttering excuse me at every impasse.

She yelped halfway through and then jogged forward to catch up with the Doctor and then grabbed for his hand. The Doctor glanced over at her to find her staring back at the police who were now snickering. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"Someone pinched my backside," Elizabeth furrowed her brow.

Elizabeth couldn't be used to interaction with other people of anytime seeing as how she had been locked up for what the Doctor could only guess was a long time. "Leave it, we can't go calling attention to ourselves."

"Where did you get that Science Authority identification?" she asked.

"It's not real," the Doctor whispered as he turned the paper for her to see.

"It's blank."

The Doctor covered the white space of the paper with his hand and concentrated on an image really hard. Then he removed his hand. Elizabeth gasped. "A bird and a cage!"

"Psychic paper, think something really hard and it appears," he said. "I saw the Science Authority signs all over your tower and then there was one here behind that police officer."

They rounded the corner to find a huge door barred with a lock. The Doctor went to fish the Screwdriver out but Elizabeth slid down into a sitting position in front of the door and fished a hairpin out of her shirt.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"What does it look like? You can't tell me you've never engaged in a little _roughish activity _from time to time," she had only just stuck the pin in and was already undoing the chain on the lock. "We couldn't go back and tell those officers we had gone the wrong way. That would have called attention to us. Plus, I didn't appreciate the pinching."

"I could have done that," the Doctor said.

"It's pretty disgustingly easy," said Elizabeth. "I don't know why they made this lock comically large." She regarded the discarded lock for a moment as she held it between her hands.

The Doctor tugged at her arm. "The further we get from that mob back there…"

"I know, the better."

* * *

The light faded, taking with it the weight of the vests and the cord that had flowed out of the back of them. The brick lined basement they had been in a moment before was replaced with a wood lined cellar. There was a flickering light dangling from a cord overhead and the dim lines of daylight could be seen through spaces in the boards above their heads.

"Booker?" Lewis's voice cut through stale air of the room.

"Yeah?"

"What is this place?"

Booker said nothing in reply. Around where they were standing there was a chalk circle roughly the size of the one that the twins had drawn on the floor of their room. "These markings. I think we were moved somewhere somehow."

Lewis stepped so that he was looking right into Booker's face. "Like magic or something?" he couldn't tell if Booker was serious or not. There was really no telling with him.

"More like some kind of crazy experiment. You saw those machines that those two had in that basement. It wasn't anywhere near normal," Booker grunted and grabbed for his face. He seemed to be having trouble supporting himself.

Almost the instance that Booker leaned against the wall Lewis was overcome by a lightheadedness and he felt a trickle of blood run down from his nose. "Do you even remember why we're here?" Lewis dropped his back against the wall to keep himself standing.

"The girl—I have to get the girl and wipe away my debt."

"Yeah, you're right. Clean slate."

The creaking hinges of a door sounded almost thunderous as a figure burst through a door at the top of some steps that up until this time had gone unnoticed by the pair. At the edge of consciousness they could hear a woman shout down into the cellar. "Is someone there?"

Footfalls. The woman had descended the stairs and was coming toward them. Things were hazy. That coupled with the darkness of the room made it hard to make out her features. Pale skin. Light eyes. A kind smile.

"Daisy! Daisy, I'm going to need Doctor McAllen!"

That was the last thing they both heard as the room slipped into dark obscurity.

* * *

Elizabeth wasn't sure where they were going. While all of the locations were familiar to her from the books she had read, she had no idea the distance between different things or even where things were in the city. Whenever she passed a recognizable sign her instinct was to shout out that she knew that place. But she knew that would be annoying. And it was also a lie.

She had read of these places and knew an assortment of little random facts about them. In reality, that was like thinking a person who had seen a sketch of an airship would know how to pilot them. Books were all that she had for so long that it was hard not to feel like some of this was familiar after reading through it all of those times. But when most of this was built she was too small to have even remembered it and had been locked in a tower for almost as long as she could remember.

Fifteen years without being around people except for a few exceptions. Sometimes the redheaded pair that called themselves doctors came and saw her. Oddly, everyone she saw after a certain point simply called themselves, doctor. Somehow she was sure the Doctor was different.

She kept those thoughts to herself.

Elizabeth couldn't believe the sheer number of the lights contained within the Casino and how they all moved in time and danced around the edges of the games. She paused for a moment while the Doctor was talking to examine herself in the reflective glass of something called _Vox Hunt_. It was some kind of game.

"We merely need to find out what kind of man this Prophet is before I go and see him. I'd figure he's religious judging by what I've seen here today…"

"Doctor, what's this?" Elizabeth said from a few paces behind. She was standing next to the game machine.

The Doctor made his way back toward her and regarded the game carefully. "That looks like an electronic pinball machine with bumpers, it's a game. Shouldn't exist yet," he muttered the last part. He was constantly saying things like that. Like he knew something about something that no one else would or could.

"You're strange, Doctor."

"Let's keep going," he said as he led her toward the back of the room where an elevator with large golden doors waited. The Doctor aimed that strange green light tipped tool he carried at the elevator button and the doors opened.

Elizabeth followed him inside and he pressed the button at to close the doors. "What is that thing?"

"Sonic Screwdriver—never leave home without it," said the Doctor in a matter-of-a-fact tone. The elevator ground to a halt with a shower of sparks spilling out of the panel on the wall. "It looks like we might have need for it again."

As the Doctor moved toward the panel he fanned the smoke out of the air. The thick smell of smoke slowly dispersed throughout the elevator. He pried the panel off, tossing it aside carelessly and was tinkering with something hidden from her view inside of the panel. A buzzing sound started up near the ceiling. A bee. She could hear the small insect circling her head.

"There's a bee in here! I hate these things!"

The Doctor glanced back at her. "You were in that tower. How did they get into the tower?"

Elizabeth stared at him. "I never thought about it." She ran her fingers through her hair, shaking the tendrils out. "It's going to get in my hair. I know it."

"Leave it be," the Doctor said. He added a short chuckle after that, "Heh, bee."

"It'll sting me!"

"Elizabeth, please," he was digging the Screwdriver back out to work on the elevator.

An idea popped into her head. "I've got it." She concentrated on the thin fabric that made up space looking for a weak point. They were everywhere and she had a knack for finding them. Some of them drifted slowly, wouldn't always be in the same place. And sometimes they tore so that they were visible to anyone.

A thin translucent line in the fabric of the ether was right in the middle of a poster advertising Vigors on the wall. She dug her hand into the crevice, feeling the warmth of another world spilling out past her fingers. Elizabeth pulled until the tear was fully visible, straining her breath not to let it go until it encompassed the entire half of the elevator.

"What is that?" the Doctor stumbled back against the wall, fumbling to catch the Screwdriver.

Elizabeth fanned at the bee nonchalantly. The other side of the tear was a desolate field with sprigs of dried grass and some strange looking windmill spinning in the distance. The bee flew off into the tear. "It's a tear. I used to open them all of the time in my tower."

"You opened it with your hands…"

"Yeah, it's not hard. Most of them are dull as dishwater; a different colored towel or tea instead of coffee. Sometimes I see something amazing though—that's how I found your _Intra-Dimensional-Mobile-Pocket-Dimension._"

The Doctor didn't even have it in him to correct her this time. He slumped against the wall with his hand pressed to his forehead. "You ripped into the fabric of space time with your hands and just opened another dimension?"

Elizabeth nodded before she walked back to his half of the elevator. He regarded her with some fear. She could see it in his eyes. She squatted down in front of him with her hands clasped over her knees. "Something is wrong with that, isn't it?" she could feel the dismay in her face, but couldn't control it.

"Two areas of time and space that shouldn't have touched and you're able to manipulate them without any device or outside help. Yes something is…not wrong, but _special_."

"I've always been able to do this. It's just how I am. I used to be able to create them."

"The windows?"

"The realities. I still think they're somewhat wish fulfillment. A lot of the time they'll just show up when I'm anxious over something. I was anxious when your blue box showed up," she said.

The Doctor stared at her with this wild, mad look in his eyes. "In all my years, in all of the time I've been around Humans I would have to say you are the most amazing person I've come across."

Elizabeth closed the tear behind herself. "Thanks," she wasn't sure how she should feel about that, but she could feel the gathering redness in her cheeks.

"What happened to your finger, Elizabeth?" he asked taking her hand in his and turning it over in his in a very tender fashion.

"I don't know. It happened when I was a baby, I guess," she said.

The Doctor touched the thimble that guarded her finger. "A one and a trillion chance thing happened when a baby girl, you, lost her finger in a window between two worlds. She gained the ability to see into the space between reality; she gained the power manipulate time and space. Feel them drumming through her head and she not only became used to it, she _embraced _it," he wrapped on the side of her forehead with his finger. "This finger is why you're able to do that," he pointed to where the tear used to be.

Elizabeth struggled to keep her balance in light of what he had just said. How could he have known this about her and about the tear when she was a baby? How was that even possible? "I've always thought it was an accident. I never knew my mother and father, so there wasn't anyone to tell me how my finger got so…gross."

The Doctor kissed the thimble. "Not gross. You are beautiful. Try as we might you're not something we can replicate," the Doctor jumped to his feet and the excitement seemed to ebb out through his words and play out in his extravagant body language. "What's best is the effect is a ricochet. Every Elizabeth in every other world will have the same ability because the event will cross cut through time. You're a mathematically repeating human anomaly and it is glorious!"

"You're scaring me. Tears aren't that great."

"Elizabeth, I could kiss you," the Doctor threw his arms open.

Affection wasn't something she was used to, but she didn't move as the Doctor planted a kiss on her forehead and hugged her. "Kissing is yuck, but the hug is…nice."

The Doctor broke contact at once. "Now we must resume our endeavor. This answers the question of _why they had you in that tower_, but it doesn't really tells us who. I want to learn as much about this Comstock character before I speak with him."

"If you're looking for history on Comstock his life pretty much began at something they call _Wounded Knee_—that's as far back as anyone ever mentions the name," Elizabeth said.

"_The Battle of Wounded Knee_?"

Elizabeth nodded. "I don't know much about that, but I think we're near the Hall of Heroes. There would be answers there."


	3. A Form of Wish Fulfillment

**Chapter Three**

The Doctor had never seen someone eat with such revelry and reckless disregard as Elizabeth. She dunked another biscuit into a bowl of gravy that sat on the festive red and white checkered table cloth between them. "What do you call this right here, this, I think you called it fried, meat?" she pointed her thimbled pinky to a plate with most of its contents gone.

"Chicken fried steak."

Her blue eyes went wide. "Because it's fried like chicken, but it's obviously not—it's—it's steak." She pulled the remainder of the biscuit open and pushed the last of the chicken fried steak inside. "I'm a genius."

"You've gone and covered yourself in all manner of condiments," he scraped a creamy-green splotch of something the front of her dress with his finger and licked it. "Where did you get horseradish sauce?"

"Someone was drizzling it on beef and it looked delicious," she said.

"I think you've got an eating disorder. I'd say it's fairly recent," the Doctor pointed at her.

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes. "I don't know what you expect. I had mostly the same things for twenty years while I was locked in that tower. It wasn't like Songbird brought me a dinner list to pick from!"

"Twenty years?"

A look of realization washed over Elizabeth's face. "I don't really remember much of the early part of that. Things are kind of a blur."

"You had to have met other people," the Doctor said.

Elizabeth nodded. "There were doctors and scientists and when I was a lot young. I don't think any of them ever gave me a name. Funny, because now there's you."

"I don't give anyone my name, really. And what's the importance of that, a name, it's a label that someone else who barely knew you thrust onto you at a time when there was nothing else to call you. I picked my own name."

"But Doctor, I don't know anything about you. Like what did you do before coming here? Do you have any family?"

The Doctor instinctively began to fuss with his bowtie. "I fix things. What's to know?" Elizabeth was staring at him with those huge eyes; she reached up to knock his hands away from the bowtie and began to straighten it. For some reason he thought of Amy. "I had a family once. A wife, a granddaughter, children. They're gone."

Elizabeth barely held back the shock in her voice. "You? Grandchildren? You're only a few years older than me." She finished the bowtie and the Doctor said nothing. "Come on, we should get a move on. All this eating is making me sleepy," she dabbed a napkin over her mouth and then cleaned the front of her dress off.

"We can't go like this."

Elizabeth turned slowly as if his eyes had her rooted in place. "What?"

The Doctor grabbed her wrists. "Whatever you start to think. Whatever you might believe, just remembered, I always leave. That's who I am, always chasing, always running, and impossible to keep up with."

She smiled, standing so close to him with her wrists locked in his grasp. "I'm faster than I look."

He let her wrists go and paced away putting his back to her. "Clothes," he said ignoring what had just happened. "We've got to find clothes. Now that we've both tumbled through an artificial sea and you've gotten food all over yourself there's some need to make us look a little less raggedy." He turned around abruptly, theatrically, "I've tried that look before; it doesn't suit me."

* * *

Keeping herself from going into Major's Notions, Sundries and Novelties as they walked past was hard. Elizabeth had never seen so many interesting things in such a confined space. The whole of Columbia was new to her, but she couldn't get past the Doctor and his strange behavior. There was something about him and the way he changed without much provocation.

She got the feeling he was hiding something personal, but she didn't want to pry. Prying caused trouble in basically every book she had ever read. Prying was never rewarded.

There was a clothing shop where a woman fitted a dress to her body and wove measuring tapes of all manner of widths around her waist. "My dear, you've got the loveliest figure. By the Prophet, you should be giving thanks and praise for these womanly gifts that have been given to you."

Elizabeth listened to every word she said, but said little. The dresses had her too distracted for talking.

"Now, now, you can't just have the meat of your breasts hanging out there like that. What's to keep the young boys from trying to take a bite? Wrap it up in a corset and throw a coat over it, I always say," the woman who was measuring her said.

Elizabeth picked a few outfits, the Doctor told her to. The one she planned to wear out of the store was perhaps her favorite if only to see what the Doctor said about it. It was women's professional attire with a long sleeved white shirt, dark blue pinstripe vest and dark blue skirt that fell just below her knees. She kept her boots.

The thing that she thought would interest the Doctor, maybe cheer him up, was the bowtie that she had slipped into the collar of the shirt. She pinned the cage emblem to the front of it. When she was done making her selection and had slipped into the new outfit the thanked the plump woman with the measuring tape and struck off to the men's side of the store.

The Doctor was studying a hat rack with pursed lips and a look of concentration on his face. She stepped off to his side and tapped him on the shoulder. "Doctor. What do you think?"

He turned, his eyes widening in excitement. "You've chosen a bowtie. Bowties are cool!"

Elizabeth slapped a hand to her collar. "I think its regular temperature actually, but then again…" she continued to feel her way around her neck.

"It's a colloquialism; it's like saying bowties are—fantastic."

"Oh, well of course they are," she smiled twisting to the side to model the new piece accessory from a different angle as she tugged at its sides. "You still haven't picked anything?"

The Doctor turned back to the hats. "It always takes me a while to find what I need."

"Well, I'm going to check out some of the other stores," she said.

"Don't wander too far!"

"Where would I go? You're the only face I know." Elizabeth turned and walked back out into the cobblestone street. The sun had already set. The day had flown by far too fast, but she was really out. She was free and she was seeing the world from ground level—so to speak.

The gas lamps that lined the street provided very little light. Columbia seemed to be a different kind of place without the bright light of the sun shining down through the clouds. The rustle of the wind through the trees was somber and in the distance she could hear the music of the carnival playing.

Elizabeth walked back to Major's and looked up at the big plate glass window. "It's closed," she pressed her face to the glass trying to catch a glimpse of the amazing things that she had seen earlier.

Laughter echoed down through a passageway between two buildings. Elizabeth pulled her face off glass and stepped quietly around to the edge of the building. There was a long alleyway that led back to a set up stairs. Those stairs went up to a breezeway. Elizabeth moved slowly down the alley and climbed the stairs.

The scene was hard to make out. There was a mass of shadow on the floor, but as the picture became more visible Elizabeth got a feel for what she was seeing. One man was holding himself down over a woman who was on her back. Elizabeth could see the movement of his hips. A second man was holding the woman at the shoulders.

The woman's cries were muffled, but were still obviously frantic. One of the men laughed. "Shut up, ain't like you were going to give it up. You're just being a tease so I'm getting mine."

"Get off of her!" Elizabeth managed.

The man who was holding her stayed in place as the other man stood up adjusting his pants. He rounded on her with sweat dripping from his nose and chin. His hair was a dirty, wet kind of blonde and he had a dusting of scruff that seemed to catch every bit of light as he walked back to where she stood. "What did you say girl?"

"Leave her alone, whatever you're doing is…"

"…what we're going to do with you—come on, we're just being how God made us. Women folk don't much like to just give it up. There's always a struggle." He rushed Elizabeth while the other man laughed and held the woman on the ground still.

Elizabeth back up to the top of the stair and she could hear something strange, like some kind of engine. There was a tear behind her, but she couldn't see through it. The man was coming too fast and caught the glint of a knife in his hand.

She turned for the tear and slipped off of the steps. She tumbled down until she was on her back at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes felt heavy and the world was blurry. But she could make out the shape of the figure standing over her. The tear; it had to be there for a reason. She had been able to open them at a distance before, but it wasn't something she usually did.

"You still there, girlie?" asked the man.

Elizabeth stretched her hands out. The thing behind the tear had to be of some use. She felt a burst of something leap from her hands and then heard the sound of the engine growing louder. The tear opened to a size big enough that it took up the whole upper area of the stairs and a huge line of saw blades connected by a big metal strip swung down through the tear on a cord and crashed into the wall.

The stress on the blades sent them careening out of the confines and the sound of the engine died away as the tear closed. The saw blades were moving so fast that she didn't even catch a glimpse of the one that split her attacker in half down to the navel. His body dropped back to the stairs as the smoke and astringent smell of diesel clouded the air.

Elizabeth tried to get up, but only managed to crawl a short way to the side of the blood before collapsing again. Her ears were ringing and she felt warm and numb. There was a second one. The second one would be here soon and she couldn't lift her hands to open a tear. She couldn't run or fight or do anything.

* * *

"There you are. Welcome back to the world of the living. Drink," the Doctor was squatting down next to her into the breezeway. She took the mug from him and drank it quickly. "Don't worry about these blokes," he pointed down the stairs and over to the other man, the one that had been holding the woman down, he was laying on his back now with a missing arm and leg.

"What happened?"

"You opened a tear and a multi-bladed tree saw used by helicopters swung in and exploded. Not their lucky day it would seem," the Doctor said.

Elizabeth had always been sure that the tears were wish fulfillment. Was she right?

"You have to tell me how you knew it would help," the Doctor said.

"Just a hunch."

There was a whimper from down the alley. "Please, he made me," came the voice. It was the man who had been holding the woman down. He was still alive. "I'm going to bleed dry over here."

The Doctor smoothed Elizabeth's hair down and stood to walk back into the breezeway where the man lay. "Please, you have to help." The man clutched at his wounded arm. "Please..." he said in a half sob.

"I don't have to do anything," the Doctor said. "What are you going to do for us?"

Elizabeth took another drink of the stuff.

"I don't know what I can tell you, but I'll tell you whatever you need to know!"

"Who lived in the tower on Monument Island?" asked the Doctor.

"The Lamb, she was Comstock's daughter. He wants her to take over the city when he passes. That's it," said the man. "Please, get me to a hospital."

The Doctor shook his head. "I told you already, I don't have to do anything. But it's nice that you'd spend your last moments on Earth doing a good deed. That's its own reward," he said.

"Have mercy," the man reached up grasping at the Doctor's clothes.

"Mercy's in short supply these days," the Doctor walked back to Elizabeth and helped her up. "The girl that you tried to save is the one who came to get me. She might have died if not for you."

_Her father? _Elizabeth said nothing. She was sure that deep in the back of her mouth she could taste something metallic, like iron. She swallowed as the Doctor led her away from the scene, but continued to say nothing.


	4. Ad Quod Damnum

**Chapter Four**

There ear piercing wail of the child screaming in the next room had become a constant reminder of what he had lost. What was he supposed to tell her about her mother when she grew up? What was he supposed to say when she realized that they had killed her together?

The truth was that Booker DeWitt had more blame for himself than Anna. Anna was just a baby. Even then she could tell something was broken inside of him. She could tell something was missing and so she cried. She cried no matter what he did and when he went to console her he could see his wife in those overly large blue eyes.

It made him not want to look at her. He didn't deserve to look at her after the things he had done and the blood he had on his hands.

In the hours when Anna was too exhausted from crying and he could pass out in a liquor-laden slumber he would dream of the figures surrounded by a wall of flame and the rhythmic pounding of the drums. The bodies of women and children littered the Dakota plains. He could hear a motherless child's upstart cries in the distance. _Anna_.

He awakened. There was someone at the door. Though he had heard no knock, he knew it to be the case. Booker got up from his desk and went over to the door inscribed with his name. _Detective Booker DeWitt_. No part of him seemed authentic. No part of him seemed grounded. He just wanted it over.

When he opened the door he could see New York. But it was New York as he had never seen it with building that stretched high into the sky and off into the distance like mountains. He was looking back at the city from a height and distance that suggested he was somewhere across the Hudson and in the sky there were massive blimps dropping some kind of munitions on the city. A siren filled the air as the balloon driven craft turned and fired at him.

The world around him exploded. Anna stopped crying. Everything was dark. A garbled voice whispered the words: _"Bring us the girl and wipe away your debt."_

Booker DeWitt awoke to a woman in a green dress with kind eyes wiping his forehead with a soft damp towel. Her face softened into a smile as she noticed him looking back at her. "It looks like you're finally back in the world of the living," she said in a low voice.

It took him a second to recognize her or recognize who she bore a startling resemblance to. "Tiff?"

She twisted her head to the side with a little smirk and regarded him with a strange look that he knew meant something along the lines of _are you kidding me_ and in that instant he knew it was Tiffany. That small gesture was so _Tiffany_.

"Already making up nicknames for me, I see," said Tiffany. "Well, soldier, before you get too attached I'd have to venture to say that I'm a little bit too old for that courtship nonsense."

She did appear to be older, but only in the same way he must have. Tiffany had died twenty years ago, give or take a little time. And here he was looking up at a woman who called herself Tiffany, looked just like his Tiffany twenty years aged, and was very much alive. The years had done her well, he could still easily see the youthful woman he had married and the only hardship seemed to have been done to her eyes.

Her eyes looked frozen in a permanent state of sadness.

"You called me soldier?"

"Staff Sergeant Booker DeWitt," she said. "I'm sorry, we went through your things to see who you were. I used to love a man in uniform," she smiled.

The job. Booker had been sent here to do a job. His contact had hidden the information in the city, he just couldn't remember what they had told him. But if this was a regular job, how did that explain Tiffany.

"You're looking at me like you've just seen a ghost," she said.

Booker sat up in the bed, grabbed both sides of Tiffany's head and kissed her on the lips. There was a wet thud as the towel she had been holding hit the floor and for a moment she reached up and hooked her hand around the collar of his shirt. Reality flooded back in as she slapped him in the face.

"Mister DeWitt—I'm not that kind of woman anymore!" He knew that slap all too well.

"Damn Booker, we just can't leave you alone anywhere. Can we?" Lewis was standing at the other side of the room with his hat crumpled between his hands. When Tiffany turned to face him, he glanced down at the floor. "Pardon the language, Miss."

Tiffany grabbed the towel up and pressed it to the place where she had slapped him. She put his hand over it to hold it in place and then released it. "It's quite alright. I don't know what the Hell's gotten into Mister DeWitt. Maybe he hit his head harder than we first thought."

"I was perhaps too forward with that…"

"You're going to have to sit here without me attending to you until dinner is ready, Mister DeWitt," Tiffany said in a stern voice.

Lewis was holding a glass of wine in his hand as he walked toward the bed. "You've got some nerve kissing all over that woman like that. What were you thinking man?" Lewis had to stifle his laughter.

"I was thinking," Booker paused to glance around and listen for anyone nearby. "I was thinking that she looked exactly like my wife."

"Wife? When the Hell were you married?" asked Lewis.

"Twenty years ago. She died in childbirth. And now there's this Tiffany woman in this place with the same name and face as my wife. Tell me how that's possible."

Lewis paced along the side of the bed. "I mean, Tiffany is a common name. There are lots of beautiful women named Tiffany, I'm sure." Lewis rubbed at his head. "You had me scared Booker, you've been out for almost a week now and this place…this place isn't right."

"What do you mean?"

"We're in the Goddamn sky for one thing. This whole city is up in the air. How could this be hidden from the world?" he threw his hands up as he paced away from Booker. "And they're extra racist," said Lewis.

"Most of America is racist. Most people I know refer to you as _that Negro that went to college_."

"They're 1850s racist, Booker. The people here practically own slaves," said Lewis.

"Okay, fine. We can leave as soon as we get the girl," Booker went to stand up and suddenly felt light headed.

"Be careful, Book. You've been basically on your ass for six days, you need to get used to moving around and eat something."

Booker nodded. "I will, Lewis." He glanced at the door where Tiffany had left. "If people here are so racist then why didn't Tiffany bat an eye at you for being colored?"

"People down here are different. In this part of the city I mean, the whites are more like you. I saw an old white man having lunch with a Chinaman just outside and they sounded like best pals. But I went up to the city with some of the others and in the city proper—well I'd chance a guess and say that no colored person down on the ground has been subjected to the public spectacle they make shit into up there. Daisy told me they raffled off a chance to throw baseballs at a white man and black woman who were in love…"

"Shit," Booker said. "If we have to go up there for this job, how are we going to handle their reaction to you?"

"I don't know."

"Well put that big ass college brain of yours to work and figure something out," Booker said.

"I'll keep thinking at it, but I can't make any promises," Lewis said.

"You're just the brains of this operation," Booker started, "If there's needs for less reputable means of handling the problem I can arrange that."

* * *

By the time dinner rolled around Booker was able to walk out of the room under his own power and eat at the table. It was storming outside and the little house creaked as the wind pushed against it. Miss Tiffany, as she was known, ran a clinic and it was because of this she had the room and supplies to take care of Booker and Lewis.

Booker caught up to her while she was ladling soup into different bowls. He waited quietly nearby watching her, unsure of how to begin. Without looking up to see what he was doing or even if she had the right person, Tiffany spoke to him. "Are you just going to stand there are you planning on saying something?"

"I just came to—I mean I want things to be right between us. You saved my life to hear Lewis tell it."

"You and your friend were bleeding like you were coming into womanhood. He healed pretty quickly, but you took some doing. You aren't the kind of man who deserves to die bleeding out on some dingy bed in Finkton. You were a war hero. A service man. That's not a death for a hero," Tiffany said.

"Lewis told you all that?" asked Booker.

Tiffany nodded. "I asked him about your time in the service."

"War hero," Booker scoffed. "I'd feel a lot more at ease were that the case."

"Two Congressional Medals of Honor," she said. "It would seem that someone seems to agree with me."

Booker lingered in the doorway eyeing her for a moment before taking a few steps into the kitchen. "Miss Tiffany? Can I ask you something?"

"Way I figure it, you just did."

Booker smiled. _Just like Tiff. She used to do that same thing._ "Have you ever gone somewhere to do something you believed to be important and when you got there," Booker sighed, "when you got there everything was just a lie?"

Tiffany stood over the cooking pot with her hands gripping the counter top and her head down slightly. She didn't move from that position for a long time. "I think that I am in a better position than almost anyone to know what that feels like, Mister DeWitt."

"I don't talk about my military service, much. I'd feel better just leaving you with that idea of it," Booker said.

"I can respect that," Tiffany said. "Sorry that I slapped you so hard. The kiss wasn't appropriate but it didn't warrant that. Truth be told, I don't think anyone's kissed me almost twenty years. I was beginning to forget the fire that wells up in you when that sort of thing happens."

"Twenty years…" Booker couldn't help shake the connection there.

Tiffany laughed. "That hard to believe?" she asked. "It's mostly my fault and the stigma behind me and who I used to be. I suppose I deserve it though."

"I'm sorry," Booker said thinking that he must look very odd just staring at her the way he had been. "It's just that you remind me of this woman I once knew and it is such a resemblance that I would swear you were related. What's your family's name? Where are you from?"

Tiffany smiled. "New York State originally, though I don't think a young woman back then could have lived in that state and ignored that jewel on the Hudson," she glanced up at him. "My family's name was Van Norton, we had a lot of cousins so you might have come across some of them. Where were you from, Mister DeWitt?"

"Kansas," even as he answered Booker was making mental notes of the things she said. His Tiffany had come from New York State too, she had moved to the city some time later and she bore the last name Van Norton. This was all wrong. She had died and now somehow she had been delivered back to him. Was this a sick dream or some kind of cruel twist of fate? She didn't seem to remember him.

There was a harsh buzzing sound from somewhere off on the other side of the building. "What's that?"

"The doorbell," Tiffany answered as she wiped her hand and headed off through the house. Booker hung back as she went out the door. The others were setting a table on the opposite side off the house from the door. He slipped out to the door to see Tiffany opening it against a gale force wind. Two figures stood in the doorway with a crate suspended between them. "Oh, may I help you?" asked Tiffany.

"May you have helped us," came a crisp British male voice. "These are a delivery for Misters Booker DeWitt and Lewis Reynolds." There was something so familiar about the voice and the two figures, but he couldn't put his fingers on it. He tried to think back to a time before the bedroom where he was nursed back to health, back to before the dreams of New York burning, but he couldn't.

The second figure spoke, a British female. "You shall inform these gentlemen that the Luteces are still aware of their progress and while time may not be short, since it is in fact infinite, it is of the essence. Also we're aware that he's hiding behind that wall listening to this conversation."

_What the Hell?_ Booker ducked behind the wall as Tiffany started to turn and walk back towards him. "Mister DeWitt are you there?" She pulled herself into the hallway to find him pressed against the corner. "Eavesdropping too? Well, I guess it's no matter—they're here for you." She turned to point to the crate and the pair carrying it, but they had vanished and the crate was in the middle of the room instead of where they last saw it near the door.

Booker found a pipe wrench in a toolbox near the door. The orange paint of the handle flaked off as he checked its integrity between his hands. He jammed it in between the slates to pry the crate apart. A resounding crack marked the shattering of the wooden box. Inside there was hay and cotton packed tightly together. Booker cleared the chaff away until his fingers grazed something cold and metallic.

He wrapped his hand around the metal object and recognized its surface at once. Polished gunmetal. Booker glanced back at Tiffany, unsure of whether he could trust her not to be scared. Booker sat over the packing.

"What is it?" asked Tiffany.

"It might not be safe," he said.

She stepped around to the side of the crate and he thought about how he could stop her. None of the solutions seemed reasonable. "The Lutece helped to create the technology that keeps this city up in the air," Tiffany said.

"Giant balloons?"

Tiffany shot Booker a stern glance that he knew all too well. "There are balloons out there, but that's not how it works. You haven't even seen the city yet, have you?" Booker shook his head in reply. "Well, we're going to fix that right now," Tiffany grabbed him by the arm towing him up until he was at his full height. Her grasp found the same resting spot he had always known her to and her fingers seemed to latch onto his in the most eerily familiar way.

_Tiffany's dead._ Booker repeated the mantra in his head until thought he might be saying it out loud. _She died giving birth to Anna…_for some reason he couldn't reason out that thought. He could concentrate on Anna. He couldn't just think of her.

"I'll just move this off the burner to cool," Tiffany releasing his hand jarred him back into the conversation. But she was soon holding his arm again and towing him out into the street. It was almost silent, the crackle of a fire could be heard off in the distance. People were camped along the side of the road near fires burning in barrels.

A child wind whipped over the cobblestone and in the distance the moon seemed too big to be correct. A mother and child were huddled together in a small space between two buildings with a patchwork of blankets for warmth, Booker blinked back a vision of the Lakota Indians huddled together. It forced him to turn away.

Everything around them seemed to be at a great distance and the sound of his own breathing was so loud. "This way," Tiffany said as rounded a small bulletin board with a vibrant red poster tacked to it. "The people here…I try to help when I can but if the authorities catch me with anyone who's not sick in my office…they punish them."

Booker had a feeling that he didn't know what punishment meant. He wasn't here to save every. _Bring us the girl and wipe away your debt_.

They came to a small three way split in the road and Booker could hear soft music ebbing from inside of a nearby bar. The singer was a woman whose voice was saccharine in a melancholy way that tugged at Booker's ear:

"_Echo, my voice is an echo_

"_Of places I don't know_

"_And stories I've been told." _

"Booker, look," Tiffany turned him to face an opening between two buildings that seemed to be made of the scrap from other buildings. He froze staring out over the open air toward some unfamiliar landmass with dotted lights on it. They were floating across the starry night sky thousands of feet above the Earth.

"_Echo. We all are connected_

"_A lighthouse, a voyage_

"_For history's sake_

"_Won't you please take notice?"_

"Mister DeWitt," Tiffany laughed as she clamped down on Booker's hand at her waist. She made no effort to remove it. They stood together looking out over the world as the islands in the air sailed by. Booker started to see more detail out there as his eyes adjusted. There were portions of the city here and there in the distance, distinguishable from the clouds only by the faint lights nestled in them.

The singer's song was dying down in the bar. "What is this place?"

"Columbia. Surely, you've heard of it."

"You'd think that I would have. I reckon the government is keeping this whole thing under wraps," Booker said.

Tiffany leaned away from him. "It's only been up here twenty something years…it would be hard to keep hidden unless you killed the thousands who saw it launched," she said.

"Then I don't know what then," Booker said.

"Maybe you ought to pay more attentions to the papers, sir," she pushed him in the chest with a flick of the hand. Before she drop her arm he caught her at the wrist. She gasped and the stood locked in position for several minutes. She pulled her hand back sharply and Booker released it.

He glanced back at the sky and then at her. That faint smirk, so Tiffany, was on her face. Without putting much thought into the action he turned to her.

"I guess you only live once…" Booker said.

"What are you talking about?"

"Unless you're you and if I didn't do this to figure out how that worked how would I live with myself?"

"You're an odd one, Mister…" as Tiffany turned to face him Booker grabbed the front of her dress and yanked her toward him. Their lips collided and he felt her body go limp against his. An involuntary moan escaped her mouth that seemed to jar her back to reality. Tiffany's back arched hard and Booker ducked down and to his right just as she slapped at where he had been.

Her other hand came across and he reached up and grabbed it in the air without even looking. "You always slapped from your right and then crossed over with your left. Even the angles are the same…" Booker said.

"You are an insufferable ass, Mister DeWitt. What are you talking about," she was rubbing her lips.

"Then why are you flushed like that? Why did you make that sound you make when you're…_in a marital way_?"

"Booker!"

"You are Tiffany. You say things she'd say. You kiss like she'd kiss. You slap like she'd slap. Somehow, I don't know how, but you're my wife!" Booker said.

Tiffany's eyes shimmered with tears. "You're a fool. Why do you think I'm down here?"

Booker looked around. He hadn't noticed, but she was different than nearly everyone he saw. There were mostly blacks, the few whites were unmistakably of Irish decent.

"This place is my prison, sure I'm allowed up to get medical supplies. But I can never marry. I can never be caught with another soul _in that way_. They'd kill us both," she said.

"Who? Why would they kill you?"

"I'm the Prophet's former wife."

"Prophet?"

"Father Comstock. The proprietor of this city. We were married until after…after his daughter _showed up_ and he didn't need me around. They said I had been caught in bed with another man…a black. That's when this happened," Tiffany opened the front of her bodice slightly to show the side of her breast where a scarified letter 'G' could be seen. "They branded me. Sent me down here."

"What does it say?" asked Booker, the anger in his voice hard to contain. He didn't want to contain it.

"I can't."

"Just tell me what it says, Tiffany."

"Booker, please."

"Tiffany," he grabbed her by the forearms.

"It says 'Nigger's Whore'," she turned away from him. "They made me beg for my life on the deck of an airship in front of a crowd. They killed some innocent black man, Daisy's brother, just to make the crime seem more realistic."

Booker had heard Lewis referring to Daisy before. "I can help you get out of this place."

"I can't leave yet," her voice hitched in her throat as blood trickled down onto her upper lip. "Booker?" the hint of familiarity in her tone wasn't lost on him. They'd had this conversation before. He had argued that they needed to leave New York. It had been the last fight before her death. Tiffany reached up to touch the blood coming from her nose. She glanced down at her fingers. "Where's Anna?"

Tiffany crumpled, her entire body seemed to go limp and just switch off. Booker barely caught hold of her waist before she spilled against the cobblestones. "Tiffany? Tiffany?" he tried to steady his voice and shook her lightly.

There was a memory just at the edge of his mind. He had been like this. He remembered bleeding from the nose and being trapped in that small room back at the office all day. Now this woman who wore his dead wife's body and nursed him back to health was suffering the same fate he had…and she had blurted out their daughter's name.

**Author's Note: The song used in here isn't of my own making. It is **_**Echo**_** by the band The Hush Sound off of their album "So Sudden". They're a great band and we're all better off for listening to them. Didn't think I would do a chapter without Elizabeth and the Doctor…but there are some really big things I want to prepare for with the two of them and I need more time to do it, but I didn't want to lose the momentum of publishing these things as fast as I was. **


	5. La Vita Nuova

**Chapter Five**

The world around Elizabeth felt sticky and wet and cold. She struggled to sit up, but the waves of pain that ricocheted through her body with every attempted motion soon called her to stop. Though she could hear herself whimpering the sound seemed to be at a distance somehow. Her head was the epicenter of the pain; the one good thing that she could say think was that as it got further from its source it lessened.

She could still feel her hands opening and closing. _The Prophet? My Father? _

The thought brought a kind of pain of its own. How could that be right? Her father. She had read about the Lamb of Columbia in various texts, the person was never given a name and really it was never really confirmed to even be a person. There were so many books that spoke of the Lamb as a figure of great change and power in the future.

Could it be that there was fear of her in the city? Maybe her Father's enemies had her locked away where he would never find—but that didn't fit with what the man on the street had said. Perhaps people had grown to fear her and she was locked away because of it. Maybe she did something wrong. _Had she killed before?_

Someone had lifted her up. She fought to lift her eyelids until she could see the distinct outline of the Doctor's chin above her. The awnings of buildings and their signs wobbled over his head. He glanced down and she caught a hint of the green in his eyes before her eyes slumped closed.

"Stay with me," his voice was just above a whisper and she could feel his fingers against the side of her face and hear the quickened pump of his heart against her ear. She noticed it seemed wrong somehow. Too fast.

And then she faded back into the numbing pain.

* * *

The previous day, after Elizabeth had woken up, he had brought her thick cuts of meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy and string beans. Elizabeth, of course, would have none of it. It had been two days since the men in the alley off of Ingersoll Lane attacked her. She was mostly nonresponsive now. A quick scan with the Sonic Screwdriver revealed that there was nothing medically wrong with her. It was like she simply didn't have it in her to move or eat.

That had been lucky, because there had been a good chance with how she landed that she had seriously injured herself. The Doctor had a near limitless supply of money to pay for a hotel suite all thanks to the easily hacked vending machines that littered the city. He could stay here with her as long as it took.

The Doctor sat on the bed in his part of the suite surrounded by books and the portable record players. Voxaphones they called them. He had poured over everything he could find about Columbia; it wasn't much. This reality's technology was more advanced than the one he was used to. Though he realized now that he had been here before. Only then it was the distant future.

Pete's world. The world where Rose Tyler had been stranded. It had been so long since he thought about her and what had become of her. And what had happened wasn't even that bad when you considered Donna or Amy and Rory. He'd left his own Granddaughter behind a long time ago and barely batted and eye. What had changed?

The Doctor ratcheted the setting ring on the Sonic Screwdriver and aimed it at the Voxaphone he'd sat off to the side of the bed on a small wooden table. There was that distinct crackle of needle meeting the groves of the record. There was a pause at the start of the recording. The Doctor had listened to it so many times. He counted out the before the speaker began by wrapping on his forehead with the screwdriver.

An authoritative voice came through the hum of the player. _"What exactly was the Great Emancipator emancipating the Negro from? From his daily bread. From the nobility of honest work. From wealthy patrons who sponsored them from cradle to grave. From clothing and shelter. And what have they done with their freedom? Why, go to Finkton, and you shall find out. No animal is born free, except the white man. And it is our burden to care for the rest of creation."_

With the conclusion of the recording the needle lifted away and popped itself back into place at the side of the player. For a long while the Doctor sat silent staring toward the wall rose colored wall with the embroidered pattern in it. Rapists. Racists. Zealots using their idea of God to carry out war. He pressed his free hand into the front of his hair, pushing it back slightly. "Why do I even bother saving them?"

He was finding it harder to justify his actions. If a Human could kill another Human simply because of the color of their skin, why should any of them be allowed to live. If a woman could be raped simply because she's seen as a prize to be taken, what value does any Human truly hold.

Lies to placate himself. He was lying because Amy was gone and the only way that he could justify being without her was to cast doubt on all of humanity. It was a childish thing to do. It was a _Human _thing to do.

Yet he still judged them as only a Time Lord could. He judged them knowing full well that he'd wiped his own people from the annals of time and the fabric of space. He'd destroyed the Could've Been King and his Army of Mean-whiles and Never-weres. He watched the Nightmare Child squirm in a lake of plasmatic fire spread across a light year of space. The Doctor wasn't a survivor. He was the destroyer; he has always been the destroyer.

"_Keep telling yourself that you did it to save the universe. This all happened because you wanted to be the hero," _he heard the Master's disembodied voice.

He couldn't think in this cramped room. This enclosed space reminded him of a red-tinted tomb now and he had to get out for a walk. He would bring back the Elizabeth's dinner in the hopes that tonight she ate.

* * *

It had been hours since she had cried. Though she was sure the Doctor would let her leave if she desired, she felt just a trapped in this suite as she had in the tower. At least in the tower she had known where she stood. The lack of freedom was a form of protection. Less than one day out and she had killed two men. She could have been killed herself.

The Doctor had claimed her to be lucky. The fall could have seriously hurt her with the way she had landed. For the first day he made her keep ice wrapped in a rag against the back of her head. She could still feel the bump through her hair.

She heard the door out in the main room shut. The Doctor was gone; he would return with a plate of something that smelled so delicious, but she couldn't work up the nerve to eat it. Water. She needed water though. Her last drink had come from the Doctor. The sudden desire the get out of the bed felt right.

It would be the first time her feet touched the floor in this hotel room. The thick lacquered wood smell of the room urged her to get up and move around.

Elizabeth crept out of the bed and into the common room and gasped at the state of the place. There were box and Voxaphones covering every surface. The Doctor had laid out all of her dresses on the back of a small couch. She grabbed the first one that she passed and headed back to her room for the shower.

This was perhaps the longest she had gone without showering. It was odd, she didn't feel dirty till she actually felt the water coursing over her skin. Already it was foreign. She washed her hair out and let it air dry. Leaving it down or putting it up; air drying or using a towel—these things didn't make a difference.

When she peeked out into the common room a second time the Doctor was still gone. She took the other dresses and hung them in her closet. There were a couple of extras that she had pointed out in the store before. Had the Doctor gotten them to cheer her up? Elizabeth stepped forward to examine one of the dresses where it hung and something bumped the side of her foot.

A hard looking aged leather bag was propped up in the corner of the closet. Someone must have forgotten it here. She dragged it out into the center of the plush carpet and undid the buckles. On top of the clothes in the bag was an aged, folded over copy of the _New England Magazine. _She flipped to the front cover to find that its publication date was her birth year and month. "Why would someone have this?" she was accustomed to speaking to herself. The sound of her voice bought more comfort than she cared to admit.

Elizabeth turned back to the page that the magazine had been open to. "The Yellow Wall Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman?" she sat the magazine aside. There were other books below that. Most of the things Elizabeth had seen were written by men.

That was while she took to Lutece's book; Rosalind Lutece was like her. Even though the two of them had never met she felt as if they shared some sort of sisterhood.

The way that Rosalind had written about her scientific career and the gender bias had made it seem that despite the fact that she wasn't locked in a tower like Elizabeth, she was still trapped in a sort of societal prison.

She lifted another book out of the suitcase. "Madame Bovary?" she read the title out loud. Written by a man, but it seemed to be about a woman. She had never heard of the book before. There was another newer book there entitled _The Art of War. _It was a door stop. She would read that one over the course of some days.

Elizabeth slid the bag under the bed and picked up the magazine. She flipped back through the pages to see how long it was. There were other interesting things in the book, but for some reason this story seemed to call to her. She would read it tonight.

* * *

The Doctor figured it had to be rare for it to rain in Columbia. The city seemed to stay above most of the clouds that would usually cause rain. In the distance he could see lightning in a dark cloud well below the height they maintained.

A chilled wind whipped over the cobblestone streets pushing clouds of dust past the Doctor as he walked. He checked his watch, there wouldn't be time to try and sneak back onto Monument Island. It had been closed the other day, but the police had mentioned finding some blue box that no one could get into up there. The Doctor wasn't worried, there was pretty much no way for anyone on 1912 Earth to harm a TARDIS. Even a malfunctioning, immobilized antique like his.

He passed in front of a bakery and the smell made his head turn. The most delicious cake smell wafted through the air. The Doctor paused midstride and stared at the bakery front window. There was a girl inside dressed in deep red, but he couldn't see her face.

"Pardon us," the Doctor turned to see the identical couple who had given Elizabeth the cage necklace. It was the female who had spoken.

The Doctor turned and looked her up and down, a smirk worked its way across his face. "Well hello there," the Doctor tugged at the sides of his bowtie.

The pair of them had the same droll expression on their faces. The female answered. "What you're eyeing isn't one of the choices, I'm afraid," she said raising one eyebrow. She was holding a platter with a silver lid covering it.

"Definitely not now," said the male starring at his counterpart.

The Doctor watched them closely. There was something peculiar about their interaction with each other. They were in sync the way that dogs running side by side through a yard would turn on a dime without bumping one another or crossing paths.

The male still stared at the woman. "Maybe we should tell him what you have done," he said.

"Haven't done, yet. You'd do well to stick to stay on task, Robert."

"_Will have done_," he said before turning to the Doctor. "_Shall have been on task_."

The Doctor was processing their weirdness in his head, but he moved that train of thought to the back burner as the woman shook her head. "We are conducting a survey…" the woman was cut off by the Doctor.

"Is that food? Is this a food survey?" the Doctor rubbed his hands together eagerly.

Robert, the male hoisted the lid off of the platter. "Which do you choose?"

"The soufflé," the woman pointed through the window to where the woman in the red dress was removing the cake-like baked good from the oven and sitting it on the counter top. He still couldn't see the baker's face.

"Or the custard and fish fingers," Robert pointed to the platter and the Doctor whirled around almost dizzy from the words.

"What did you say?" the Doctor asked he stumbled in disbelief.

"Which do you choose?" Robert and his female counterpart repeated.

"There's only one choice, backwards," Robert pointed to the fish fingers and custard. The Doctor's chest ached for Amy.

"…or forwards," the woman pointed inside at the soufflé. She turned to Robert. "It's going to be forward."

"Backwards does hold its advantages."

"This one _always _moved forwards. This one rows," the woman said narrowing her eyes at Robert.

"Rose, please," Robert said.

A door opened behind the Doctor and he could tell by the distance that it belonged to the bakery. He turned to see the woman in the red dress with her chestnut brown haphazard curls facing toward him. She was looking the opposite direction down the street at another young man who was walking past. "Have you seen Mister Saltonstall? He usually picks his orders up promptly at the time they should be done."

"I haven't seen him Miss C…" the young man said.

The Doctor turned back to face Robert and Rose, but they had vanished. He watched as the woman in the red dressed retreated back into her bakery, her hair swinging over her face so that he couldn't see. The Doctor turned away, he would find Elizabeth's dinner somewhere else.

* * *

_Killing is a necessary evil_. Elizabeth had gotten the message over the course of reading _The Art of War_. The book had one hundred more pages for her to get through, but she had figured that she wasn't at fault for killing those men. She had saved that woman in the street—that woman's life was worth more than two rapists.

She had read the word rape in some books, but faced with the reality of it was much more daunting. It wasn't something to be glossed over. The possibility of sex was something else she had never given much stock to. Sex wasn't something that just happened _out there_. She was out there now. The tower had been a prison, but it had meant safety and no hard choices.

Elizabeth thought back to her first day reading in the room and the Yellow Wall Paper. The story had resonated so well with her. _Confined to that small space for her safety, but it really was just a prison. Becoming the woman in the wall was a more desirable fate than being trapped. _

The story felt like it had been written for her. It had taken her less than an hour to read, but digesting it had taken most of the night and parts of the next day. She ate dinner that night because of it and began on _Madame Bovary._

If she hadn't thought about sex before that book certainly reminded her that she was missing out on _something_. She tried to gloss over the affairs and remember that it was something to do with the French. The French were known for that sort of thing. Where she had read over the mentions of rape without stopping, she had done the opposite of mentions of romance and kissing in books.

When she came across things involving romance it caused her to stop. At times she didn't like the feelings it evoked in her. She would usually power through it, but there were times where she would trace her finger down to the page hunting for the end of the mentions of hitched breathing and intense embraces. At least _The_ _Art of War_ was missing any references to _those topics._

_This is for the best_, Elizabeth decided. Despite all that had happened she might actually have a chance to hold hands, kiss, hug, make friends, get married (and the things that came with that) and just be out around others experiencing the things that the tower never would have let her.

Elizabeth wanted to be the girl open to new things. She wanted to live without regrets and that meant she couldn't hold what happened against herself. She had saved someone and that had only happened because Elizabeth was right where she was supposed to be.

* * *

Most of her seventh day was spent locked in the bedroom. She had been eating for the last few days, but she was reading so much and there were periods where she was still sore. The Doctor had promised her this meal: spaghetti bolognaise with melted white cheese covering most of its surface. A woman who ran an eatery nearby had baked a small pan especially for him; since Elizabeth had shown that she was not afraid to eat he had hoped it would succeed where other dishes had failed.

After a few moments of standing the Doctor stepped toward the huge oak door and knocked. "Elizabeth. It's time for supper—I'm coming in," he waited for a response as he rummaged for the Sonic Screwdriver, but when he reached for the handle the door was unlocked.

The Doctor stepped into the lavish bedroom, his boots sinking slightly into the carpet where he stopped. His eyes trailed up to Elizabeth laying on the bed's top sheet with a comforter stopping at her lower back. She was nude from there up, though since she was facing away from him he could see nothing except the back of her head. The style of her hair had changed; she had curled her hair into exquisite ringlets that rested on her bare shoulders in a way that gave the Doctor pause.

There was a book in her hands, though the cover was facing away from the Doctor. Elizabeth didn't mover to cover herself or even acknowledge the Doctor's presence. He dragged the cart carrying the tray of food into the room behind himself. "Elizabeth, don't turn around!" he held a hand up to stop her. "I've brought food," he said. He had seen more than his fair share of young nude women; this was no different.

Her demeanor had changed over the last few days. The books she was reading weren't anything that should have been in the room. They weren't anything that should have been in a city like this. The Doctor had taken note of the censorship. There were very few things in the library written by women. Nothing that would go against the teachings of the Prophet Comstock. Even political theories that didn't accept hard nationalism or that wouldn't allow for white supremacy were nowhere to be found.

"You didn't knock," Elizabeth said. She pulled her arm close to cover her breasts and turned to look at him as she slid beneath the comforter. Her other hand was held between the pages of a large book to hold her place.

"Why didn't you cover yourself?" asked the Doctor.

"You didn't knock and you said you were coming right in," Elizabeth said.

"I see."

"I'm sure you'd fancy nothing more than seeing me dart across this room completely indecent," Elizabeth said. "But we have to save something for after the wedding," she smirked. "Now get out so I can dress."

"Wedding?"

"We're already sleeping in the same hotel…"

"It's a suite."

"We're sharing a bathroom. We're not related. Some would claim we're living in sin. Now. Out."

The Doctor started for the door, glancing back as he went. "You're better. That's good."

"Thank you. Out," she said giggling.

As the Doctor crossed the threshold he could hear her leap from the bed and bound across the room to slam the door. "Hurry up and dress."

"I'm going to eat this while reading and then get dressed."

"It's hot. That could drip. Eating nude isn't a good idea."

The door opened and Elizabeth poked her head out. "I'm an adult, I think I'll manage. Besides, tomorrow we need to get back to the Hall of Heroes, so I need to finish this book."

"You're ready to go out tomorrow?"

"Of course, but there's one condition: you have to hold my hand," Elizabeth said.

* * *

**Author's Note: **All of the book titles used here are real and would have been available in 1912. The magazine that contained _The Yellow Wallpaper _also was published in January 1892…which happens to be Elizabeth's birth year in the game. I would suggest reading _The Yellow Wallpaper_. It's free, short and creepy.


	6. Intermediary

**Intermediary **

The past regrets darkened her memories. Amy reeled from the full weight of the finality of her mistakes. This was truly the end. No regeneration. No restoration fields. No clever sleight of hand like she had used to fool The Silence_._

She had run from being _Madame President _of the Time Lords and in a way the Time War was her fault. When she used The Moment to set her people ablaze and burn a hole through reality that was partially a way to right that wrong.

For all the good they had done, the Time Lords had been corrupted and their demise was a necessary loss. There had been other losses over the years, but there was something different about this time. There was something that made this the last time. Amy could stop all of the end of time and space. She could fend off the Daleks and stop their ultimate war with the Time Lords. How could she meet her end like this?

Amy played the scenario over in her head: In a bid to save her best friend from the Weeping Angels, in a bid to hold onto him, she had risked the TARDIS and everything else that she held dear.

And now she had failed and would pay for it with her life.

The old ship vibrated violently and showers of sparks rained down all over the control room. She pulled at the slider and circled the console flipping switches. Nothing worked and the ship threatened to sheer itself apart.

The TARDIS was ricocheting through the Vortex now. If the ship exploded in here, as she traveled between whatever times it was trying to run through, it could pepper a good chunk of history with dangerous debris and radiation.

Stopping midflight would surely kill her and destroy her beloved old 1960s era London telephone booth, but it would save countless lives. Without a second thought she reversed the polarity of the time rotor and pulled back on the brake lever.

The TARDIS bucked and rolled as stress fractures rippled through the walls all around her. There wasn't energy to keep the shields raised. A bubble of force erected around the console area protected her from the virulent twisting at the edges of the vortex and that protection wouldn't last.

Amy gripped the handrail that lined the edge of the TARDIS console, perhaps for the last time. She stared up at the time rotor as its glass structure begin to melt. Part of her wanted to apologize to the Old Boy. But she was never one for sorries.

Smiling through another cascade of sparks, Amy glanced up and whispered. "Geronimo."


	7. Last of the Time Lords

**Chapter Six**

Time Lords tended not to need much sleep unless they were freshly regenerated. The Doctor had spent the last several days trying to crack the secrets of Columbia's past in the only way that he now could, through history books. With the advantage of being able to pop back in time and see things first hand and unedited taken away from him, he was feeling the stress of dealing with the diluted approach to written Human history.

The writings of Columbia set out to illicit a sense of awe in the reader. The language practically teamed with words that evoked nationalism and pride and at the same time found a way to dump on the accomplishments of others.

The Doctor had earned this rest. He needed to clear his head and be able to take in all that he came across at the Hall of Heroes with a fresh perspective. Whether he liked to admit it or not he had wrapped himself up in their version of the narrative for just long enough that it might have tainted some of his views.

A thunderous crash in the street pulled him from his sleep. He sprung from the bed and rushed through the darkness knocking over a stack of books and nearly tripping over the leg of a table in the process.

He pulled on a shirt and buttoned hurriedly buttoned it down the front. Lights began to come on outside as the people of their small floating piece of the city awoke around them. The Doctor ran to the window while he tied his bowtie. Whatever had fallen had hit a few streets over from where they currently were. The buildings were blocking any hope of seeing the thing, but he could hear the voices outside. In the distance someone was ringing a fire bell.

"What's going on?" Elizabeth appeared in the doorway to his room rubbing the sleep from her large blue eyes.

"Something bad. Something very bad."

Books tipped off their stacks as the room shook violently. The tremor lasted a matter of seconds before it abated.

"We need to get out of this building," the Doctor said.

"What was that?"

"Quickly. Dress and follow me."

Elizabeth dashed back to her room in a huff. The Doctor followed her out to the center room that joined their bedrooms. He slipped back into his coat and there was another tremor. The Doctor extended his Screwdriver up into the air and pulled it back down to check the side of the device.

He gathered a few more things and tried it the Screwdriver again.

Elizabeth stepped out of her room with her dress hanging loosely in the front. "What are you trying to see?" she asked.

"I think we're falling," the Doctor said.

"The Hotel is going to fall down around us?" she shouted going for the door.

"Not the hotel, this entire section of the city."

"The city floats through a process that," she opened the door with one hand in the back to hold the dress together, "doesn't allow for falling. The suspended particles aren't effected by gravity."

The Doctor put a hand around her back and guided her out into the hallway. "You must know I know that. But there are things that can interrupt the process. Something temporal. Some large enough and photonic. Black holes…"

Elizabeth jogged to keep up. "Now you're talking over my head."

"It happens to the best of them. Now, come along…" the Doctor turned back to her just as they reached the door. "Let's go."

It was instinct at this point. Running towards the danger had long been the Doctor's way. His boots pounded the cobblestones and he could hear his hearts thundering in his ears. Elizabeth was having an issue keeping up. They rounded the corner into another street and the Doctor saw it.

First he heard it, but an instant later he spotted it and the sight was too hard to process with the sound. The melancholy drone of a TARDIS could be heard lightly in the distance, though the sound was weak. One of the buildings on the street had been hit and it was burning. In the edge of the wrecked building the Doctor spotted the culprit.

A red phone booth, the style they had in London and other parts of England. It was splintered and broken, its doors thrown open wide. Elizabeth grabbed the Doctor's arm as she ran up. "What do we do?"

The Doctor said nothing as he stared at the TARDIS in the wreckage. _Another Time Lord?_ _Perhaps another him._ The prospect of it frightened him too much for words. He had left Rose and the Meta-Crisis version of himself here in the future. But this wasn't them. This was all wrong.

The wrecked TARDIS was wheezing out its last breaths. The sound was growing fainter with each passing second.

"Doctor did you hear me?" Elizabeth asked.

The ground shifted beneath their feet and the entire piece of the city they stood on started to pitch to one side. "If this falls everyone up here will die."

"Can you stop it?" asked Elizabeth.

"Yes."

She turned her back towards him. "There's people in there, I can hear them." Now that she mentioned it the Doctor could hear them too. "Lace me up. I'll get the people out of that building and you get this piece of the city fixed before we drop out of the sky."

The Doctor hurriedly laced the back of the dress up as he spoke. "I would need to get inside of the belly of the city to do that. Is there an access port in the sewers?"

"Sewers? No. It-it was too dangerous to house it where anyone could get to it. There should be a port on the side of the city. It'll be marked on the ground with a maintenance symbol, but you would have to fly down to reach it," she said.

He finished with the back of her dress and she bounded off. "Just go. I'll find a way," the Doctor said.

The nearest edge of the island wasn't far. The Doctor ran over to it staring at the ground all along. It took a bit to see, but there was a blue marker on the edge of the pavement. The light of the rising sun was just touching it. The maintenance entrance was somewhere below. The Doctor dug deep into his pockets. "I know it's here somewhere."

His hand came out clasping a bundle of sturdy rope that extended well back into his pocket. It took several seconds to draw it all out. "This is very idiotic. Stupid actually. This is a very bad idea," the Doctor tied the rope onto the base of lamp. "I'm going to have to regenerate after this…"

The Doctor ran the rope out as another tremor shook the island. With a running start he dashed for the edge of the platform tying the rope around his waist as he went. He jumped from the side and aimed himself to swing back in toward the spot the blue marker had indicated. The rope jerked hard against his body and he arced down towards a small ledge with a metal door on it that led into the inside of the island.

He slammed into the rocks with a thud dropped onto the platform. He would need the rope to climb back up. The door unlocked easily enough with the Sonic and once he was inside he could see the inner workings of the cities parts. Whoever had designed this was a genius. The city wasn't just flying. It was moving in a field together. The parts could be rearranged, but the whole city would stay close together as it moved. It didn't need to be piloted, it was a natural effect of the process.

If one part of the city was falling, like theirs was, it could potentially draw down nearby parts and ruin the field. That was the one downside. The Doctor pulled open an access panel on a nearby wall and looked at the sloppy wiring that filled it. A machine across the room was arcing bolts of electricity through the air to another machine.

There was an easy fix for this. All he had to do was attach this piece of island to the nearby ones for support. He could access its part of the field, which was weakening, and latch it onto the ones around it. With the Screwdriver it was quick work. He needed the correct access panel, though.

It had been sometime since these maintenance halls had been occupied. He hit a large group of cobwebs with the Sonic Screwdriver to clear them out of his way as he rounded a corner. A figure at the end of the hall brought him to a dead stop. He couldn't see much besides the back of her head and the shape of her hips beneath the folds of hair.

Something familiar called to him, screamed to him. It was so loud here that there would be no way she could hear him approaching. The Doctor stepped lightly, holding the Screwdriver out ahead of himself in a ready position. The woman was over the access panel that he needed, he knew it.

That TARDIS had damaged this piece of the city and she had come down to fix it. But how had she gotten here so fast? Maybe there's dedicated workers for these things.

"Hello there. Come to fix the city?" asked the Doctor as he neared her. He noticed a sound faintly over the noise of the city's workings. A Sonic Screwdriver. But his wasn't engaged.

"Well I should be the one to fix it. I broke it, after all," the woman's voice hit him like a mountain avalanche and when she turned around he stumbled back, almost collapsing to the ground.

Every inch of her was Amy Pond. Red hair. Green gaze. Pale skin. Even the clothes were an outfit he could have sworn Amy wore once before. A sleek leather jacket with a maroon and tan scarf bundled around her neck and a full festive skirt. She stared at him with a look of disbelief, there was a red tipped wand in one of her hands. A Sonic device of some sort.

"Matt?" the voice was Amy's too. The tone, the inflection and accent were all spot on.

The Doctor was rooted in place. He gripped the top of the Sonic Screwdriver, twisting the small device against his palm as he stared at her.

"I mistook you for someone else, it's just that you look exactly like him," said the other Amy. He knew in an instance that she wasn't Human. There was something about Time Lords that he didn't quite understand himself. They could always tell when another of their kind was around and he didn't understand it.

"You must be mistaken," the Doctor stepped forward. "I'm the Doctor. Just the Doctor."

Amy smiled. "Amelia Pond. And you're a Time Lord. How come it is I've never heard of you?"

"Different universes. Different people. You crashed here, that was your TARDIS I saw above."

Amy glanced down. "That was the last TARDIS. The rest of them along with our people were wiped out in the Time War…at least where I came from."

The Doctor closed in on her and for what seemed like the first time he realized how beautiful Amy was. He resisted the urge to doing anything rash and instead checked the access panel where she had been working. All of the gauges checked out normal, as he had expected. "Where I come from they were killed by me," he muttered.

He could tell by her lack of questions and the expression on her face that she had been the one to do it in the other reality. The Doctor placed the metal cover on the access panel and he was trying his best not to look at Amy. If he looked away it was easier to control what he might do or say.

Then he heard a slight sniffle. Amy stifled a cry. "I'm sorry," she said with her voice thick with tears.

_She had been crying the last time he saw her. The instant before the Angel took her away_.

The Doctor wanted to comfort her. He wanted turn and push his lips to hers. What a very unlike him feeling to have. Amy rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. "You're wearing the face of the—friend I lost recently. He was taken by the Lonely Assassins when we visited Dubai."

"Weeping Angels," the Doctor said in a voice so low and quick that he wondered if the words had come out of him. "They took the Amy from my world."

We're counter parts," Amy sniffled. "From different realities. You're the last Time Lord there and I'm the..." her words trailed off.

The Doctor leaned down on the panel so that his arms were extended out and his shoulders were hunched up above his hung head. "You—Amy used to always say that I was her best friend," he had been feeling tears in his eyes now too. He had just began to get over this. He had just found Elizabeth and in her someone whom he could run away with again.

_But running away is what lost Amy. Running away gets them killed or lost or worse…_

"When I set the Medusa Cascade ablaze to stop the War I settled on the fact that I would never see another Time Lord again," Amy said.

The Doctor stared into her eyes and their gazes locked for a moment. She seemed to recognize him briefly, it was an expression that flashed over her features for such a short time that he scarcely thought he had seen it. A smirk worked its way over her face. "Eyes forward, soldier."

_Ablaze. Fire. _"We need to get back to the surface. Follow me, I left a rope," the Doctor said.

* * *

Elizabeth coughed harshly as she fought through the halls. The rooms she had checked so far were empty, but she could hear the screams of a child somewhere in the distance. Fire had spread so quickly and parts of the building were crumbling around her.

She held a handkerchief to her face to try and guard against the smoke and tried to keep as low as she could below the smoke. The harsh air still clouded her lungs and caused her to cough. With one hand pressed to the nearest wall she navigated below the smoke toward the final door. The sound had to be coming from in there.

The floor felt rickety and there was a resounding creak that peeked above the roar of the blaze. Elizabeth scuttled toward the closed door and just before she reached it the ceiling gave way and a huge burning beam dropped onto the tail end of her dress. The fabric wasn't made for trouncing about in burning structures and caught easily.

Elizabeth slapped at the fire with her hands, dropping the handkerchief in the process. The fire on her dress was spreading slowly and as she tried to pat it out the thimble on her pinky heated up and burned her. She pulled her hand back and rose up to stomp the fire out the rest of the way. But in the process the poison air filled her lungs.

Overcome with smoke she dropped to the floor crawling. A nearby window burst and the floor was showered with glass. She glanced around for a tear, but found nothing. The door was just out of reach now, she could just keep going. The air there might be clean. She tapped at the door, warm, but not from a fire on the other side. The handle was cold and she managed to grab it before falling to the floor.

A rush of cool air hit her and she could hear the fire flare up behind her. Gasping, she lifted herself back into a crawl and moved through the door. Staring back at her from a bed near the window was a little blonde haired boy clutching a teddy bear.

"Hey there," Elizabeth rolled onto her back coughing after the short phrase.

The floor creaked and when she opened her eyes the little boy stood over her clutching a glass of water. She struggled to sit and drank from it quickly. Dropping the cup as soon as she finished it, she hugged the child. "I'm Elizabeth, Sweetheart. I've come to get you out of here."

The path behind her was barred and smoke was pouring into the room. She closed the door to buy them more time and ran to the window. Fire crews were already gathering outside and they were bringing an airship around filled with water to put the flames out. Keeping the little boy hugged close to her she hung out of the window.

There would be no way the airship could get close enough to pick them up.

The fire crew spotted her right away. "There's no rope aboard. We're going to need you jump, miss. The building could come down any second."

"There's a child with me!" she shouted, her throat raspy.

"You both have to get out of there now," shouted another member of the fire crew.

One of the rails passed right near the window. She could reach it if she leapt. "Throw down a Skyhook."

There was a moment's hesitation and the metallic object twirled down through the haze into her hands. She slipped the Skyhook onto her arm. "I can either burn alive or potentially fall to my death. Maybe freedom and choices are overrated," she hefted the child into her arms and jumped out into the open air with the hook out.

She was going to miss the rail and she closed her eyes anticipating a long fall with a very disappointing ending. But the rail snagged and she moved slowly down the rail line until she pulled the trigger in the hook and it dropped her onto a platform she passed over. A crowd had gathered in the street and they were clapping as she slung the boy down onto his feet and dropped back against the wall to gasp in the air.

The Skyhook slid off of her arm and clattered onto the cobblestones and she dropped to sit next to it.

"Elizabeth," the Doctor was coming through the crowd. "Are you okay?"

"I breathed in a lot of smoke," she wheezed.

The Doctor pressed his Screwdriver to her breasts. "Go ahhhhhhh," he said.

She did as she was told and as she made the tone she could feel something vibrating in her lungs, the Screwdriver was engaged and the tone seemed to resonate through her body. He pulled the tool away and she hacked and coughed up gobs of ash.

"That should help," the Doctor patted her back.

A redheaded woman stepped in beside the Doctor and Elizabeth glanced up at her. For a moment she suspected that the woman worked for the city, but the manner of her dress and the manner in which she stood there suggested otherwise. She pulled a tool out that look similar to the Sonic Screwdriver and aimed it over at the wrecked building.

"The explosion could have been worse," her accent was thick and had a rounded kind of sound to it. Elizabeth hadn't heard enough people speak to really know accents. "The TARDIS Matrix did something to save me from burning up in the vortex and to keep the people here from dying."

The Doctor nodded. "The last time that a TARDIS exploded it burned for billions of years like a miniature sun," he said.

Elizabeth was still trying to clear her throat before she started to talk. "Who is she?" she asked. "And what are you talking about? The TARDIS is fine, we left it on Monument Island."

The Doctor shook his head. "A TARDIS is just a type of ship, there were millions of them at one time. This is Amy, she's got her own TARDIS."

Elizabeth tried to steady her vision on Amy. "It's nice to meet you, I'm Elizabeth." Then she remembered the other day at Battle Ship Bay. _Amy is the name he was calling out in his sleep. He knows her?_

"Is everything okay?" asked the Doctor.

Everything was blurry and the longer she kept her eyes on one spot the worse it got. She nodded despite that. "I'm fine, I think I should go find some water," she said as she shuffled backwards. The Doctor was only looking at her in sideways glances. His eyes seemed to be fixed on Amy. His full attention had turned to this new person. Who was Amy?

She headed toward the fire crew around the corner. They had to have some drinkable water over there. Elizabeth found the fireman and police gathered together around the back of a wagon filled with supplies. There was a thermos of water there.

"Ma'am, are you okay?" one of them asked. She nodded. "We're going to need you to stay back."

"I just need some water," Elizabeth said.

"Wait beside the cart. I'll find a way to get you some," one of the fire fighters said.

She leaned back against the wall brick wall next to the cart to wait. There was so much commotion at the scene that she didn't hear anyone come up behind her. A sack was thrown over her face and an astringent smell clogged her nostrils. She was choking and her body started to go slack.

And then everything went black.


	8. The Order

**Chapter Seven **

Elizabeth passed out of sight around the corner and Amy turned to face the Doctor. "So who's she?" she asked after a few seconds.

The Doctor bent toward her, his hands slightly clasped and his face drawn tight. "She's a young woman I'm helping to leave this city," the Doctor said.

"Then why don't you just put her in your TARDIS and fly away?"

He stepped closer to her and glanced around before leaning in to whisper. "TARDIS isn't working," he said. "Something's keeping it here."

"Maybe I could help?" Amy asked. Before the Doctor could answer a man with a baton stepped in and battered the Time Lord back with blows. The Doctor crumpled to the ground as Amy was grabbed roughly from behind. A sudden pain marred her vision and her legs buckled. There was laughter and by the time she opened her eyes again there were men in hoods surrounding the Doctor and kicking him in the ribs. She went to yell for them to stop, but a punch filled her mouth with blood and she passed out.

Her eyes opened. She didn't know how much time had passed. Men carried her by the shoulders, dragging her so that her shoes scrapped along the cobblestones. In front of her there was something large, through swollen eyes she could just make out the mechanical figure of a huge man. And she thought, no, she was sure she could see its heart beating through a porthole like window.

"Why?" Amy managed.

Something wet and warm hit her, spit. "Fuckin' Mick, keep your mouth closed."

_They thought she was Irish?_

The next time Amy opened her eyes she was laying on a thin layer of hay on the stone floor of some kind of prison cell. A pail stood in the corner that, from the smell of the air, hadn't been washed out since the last occupant used it. The hay itched against her skin. She realized there was too much skin itching a moment later. Most of her clothes had been taken from her and she was in just in a smock made of burlap.

It was a labor just to roll over onto her back. If she was careful about it she could expend a slight amount of Regeneration energy to heal some of the injuries. Amy couldn't afford to repair everything fully, but she could make it easier to move at the very least. She concentrated and she could feel a warm tingling feeling overcome her body. The pain dulled.

She got to her feet and took time to take in her surroundings. The Doctor was nowhere in sight and neither was Elizabeth. But the latter had been gone when they were taken. She was no doubt trying to figure out where they had vanished to right now.

The room that had the cell in it seemed to be concealed, not by a door or curtain, but by a shelf of some sort moved over an opening. There were crates stacked in the corner of the room together with the word provisions written on the side of them in large capital letters. When she steadied her breathing and listened hard there were voices in the distance. Crackling music was playing on a record player in the next room.

"Okay, Amy. Just assume they're not coming back for a while. Getting out of here ought to be easy enough." The mistake was one that most people made when they captured her (and she had been captured plenty over the years). They took her coat and most of her clothes, but left her in her underwear. Even if they had bothered to pat her down the pockets of the coat and her bra were dimensionally transcendental and much like the TARDIS were bigger on the inside.

She made one last check of her surroundings to verify that no one was watching. Amy reached down the front of the smock into the cup of the bra and drew out a Sonic Pen. They'd relieved her of her device of choice, but she kept a spare just in case. The lock on her cell was easy enough to undo with the small tool and she stepped off of the hay covered floor and onto the rough stone of the room.

Amy was able to slide the bookcase away from the wall enough for her thin frame to squeeze through. The room was empty and looked to be some kind of a private bar. It was well stocked and there were various liquors left on the tables and the surface of the bar itself. A smell like rotten fruit mixed with stale beer and cigarettes prevailed and she covered her face to avoid gagging.

As she neared the bar she found the source of the smell. Platters had been left out until they turned into a slurry of juices and the membranous remains of fruit. Whole plates were filled with cigarettes and something that looked like bird poop filled one corner of the room. She wanted to hope that whoever had used this place had abandoned it. But since she had been brought here she knew that to be false.

The room wasn't particularly dusty. Someone had been here recently. Then there was the music. At first the beat had been recognizable, but she hadn't paid any mind to it until now.

"_Once I ran to you  
"Now I'll run from you  
"This tainted love you've given  
"I give you all a boy could give you  
"Take my tears and that's not nearly all  
"Oh...tainted love." _

"That song's fifty years too early," Amy whispered to herself. It wasn't the original Motown version of the song or the Soft Cell cover…it was period appropriate which, by the clothing and architecture she had observed outside, she could guess was pre-World War I.

She crept over the cold tile floor avoiding any spot that seemed to questionable to be stepped in. her clothes were flung over a table in the far corner with her shoes sitting in the booth seat nearby. Amy dressed quickly. "Pale as I am, they might see me giving off light in this place…" she muttered.

There were footsteps nearby, Amy clambered against the wall and dug her hand into her coat pocket for the baton like handle of her Sonic device. She held the device up, opened the compartment at the base and pressed the button on the bottom while twisting the dial that surrounded the button.

A long, slender blade extended out from the device in place of the light as she prepared to fight her way through whoever it was that had brought them here.

* * *

A pair of men led the Doctor through a room that he could only guess was the foyer of wherever they were. A large statue of John Wilkes Booth preparing to shoot Lincoln dominated the center of the checkered floor. There was a pile of bird feces resting on the lip of the monument. It was a small wonder that the air out here was just as rank as it had been in his cell.

The Doctor had read about these individuals in the books that he collected on his week-long reading spree while Elizabeth coped. The Fraternal Order of the Raven; their primary function was dealing with the presumed lesser races when they stepped out of line or with those who would seek to help or befriend those other races.

Before they dragged him out of his cell the Doctor could barely make out the charismatic shouts of a gruff male preaching the importance of racial purity. "Where are we going?" asked the Doctor.

"You're going for questioning. We need to know how the foreigner came to be in our city," the man's voice was muffled by a cloth hood.

"I came here through the Lighthouse. I suppose that's how it's usually done," the Doctor said.

The taller of the two men stopped and glanced back at the Doctor through the eye slits in his hood. "Not you, Englishman. The redhead. She's of Irish stock and her type belongs in Finkton with the rest of the potato-blooded-bastards and niggers."

The sentiment shocked the Doctor and he stood there for a second without saying a word. "Amy's Scottish. If she knew anyone had so much as accused her of being from anywhere else you'd lot be in trouble." Of course this wasn't the case, because this wasn't _his_ Amy.

And as if thinking that brought her into being, he saw a flash of red hair and a blade burst through the taller hooded man's chest. Amy held a narrow sword through the man's body. The second hooded figure turned and pulled a pistol, but Amy countered by moving the first man's corpse in front of herself for cover. The point of the sword fired off two darts and hit the second man in the chest, he went to the ground shaking under an electrical pulse.

Amy retracted the dart tips and pulled the sword from the man, letting his body hit the floor. "There you are Doctor, sorry that it took so long." She casually flicked the blood off of the sword as the Doctor stared at her in disbelief. "What is it? Did I get some on my top?" she glanced down to check her shirt.

"You killed two men with a sword," the Doctor said in a voice that was half whisper, half shout.

"Duh," Amy said. "One of them spit on me. Well, someone in here did. They also beat me up, if you didn't notice."

"Since when do you—you know?" he mimed sword fighting in the air.

"Since you don't actually know me, Raggedy Man," Amy said.

The nick name made the Doctor swallow his next words. Of course she was just calling him that because of the fact he had been roughed up and looked a mess.

Amy tucked the weapon under her arm and stepped in close to fix his bowtie. "I do the heroic thing and leap to your rescue, saving you from a pair of anachronistic and seemingly racist American blokes," she pointed back to the statue of Booth here, "and all you can think to say is 'why did you have to kill them Amy?' It seems like no matter the universe some things never change."

"Well you certainly have," the Doctor said.

"Your Amy was a Human girl. I'm a three hundred year old Time Lady, you don't Regenerate once and time lock your entire race without getting a new perspective," Amy said.

"I—wait, you've only Regenerated once?"

Amy rolled her eyes. "Yes, what does that matter?"

"That's just…once in three hundred years," the Doctor shook his head. "I just thought we'd be more similar."

"How old are you?" Amy asked. When he shuffled away in though she followed it up with, "Doctor?"

"Around twelve hundred years…you know how hard it is counting age with frequent trips back and forth through the vortex…" the Doctor trailed off.

"And how many Regenerations?"

"Twelve…well sort of," the Doctor as he rubbed his hands together.

"You've been living life in the fast lane," Amy smiled.

The Doctor smoothed his clothes down. "Says the woman wearing a bag and stalking around the place with a sword coming out of a…what is that?"

"Modified Sonic Baton, Sonic Sword I guess…never leave home without it," Amy said. She retracted the sword blade. "See?"

The silence that passed between them was filled with a shared glance that couldn't have been the kind of thing that the Doctor remembered speaking about with Amy before on the TARDIS. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He had said the words: _"The thing is Amy, everyone's memory is a mess; life is a mess. Everyone's got memories of a holiday they couldn't have been on or a party they never went to. Or met someone for the first time and felt like they've known them all their lives. Time is being rewritten all around us, every day. People think their memories are bad, but their memories are fine. The past is really like that."_

The connection between him and this Amy Pond. The Time Lady Amy Pond was peppered with bits of his Amy and her companion. He could feel a second set of memories as he looked into her eyes. He could see a different TARDIS console and the fantastic adventures that they'd had there.

Had he lived that second Human life with this Amy in the space of a few seconds? Or was he imagining it. History wasn't rewritten. This was different, this was a different set of worlds. There should be no reason for the memories to cross over the way they were.

"Something is wrong with this place." Amy's voice startled him and for a moment he hoped that it was his Amy.

The Doctor clasped a hand to her shoulder. "Did you see that?"

Amy's eyes shimmered with tears. But she lied anyway. "No."

The Doctor pulled his hand away as voices neared them from another passage. "girl's a Columbian citizen. Can't tell you why I think I remember her from somewhere."

"We can just execute the Irish bitch and her Red Coat friend," a second voice said. "Unless you and the others think there might be some fun to be had with her."

"They've got Elizabeth," the Doctor whispered. It was the only thing that they could be talking about.

"Then we've got to go and get her back," Amy said as she extended the sword out.

"Maybe you should slip into some clothes first, but be quick about it. We can't have them discovering what she really is," the Doctor said.


End file.
